DoctorOz: Venus Williams on Her Autoimmune Health Battle | Dr. Oz | S5 | Ep 20 | Full Episode

Dr. Oz. How to tap into the mind, body, and soul. The miracles of meditation. You end up living a life better than you're even imagining. Your blood pressure dropped dramatically. Ten minutes can take your world. From OMG to oh. Plus Venus Williams. She opens up about her health struggles. You have not spoken much about this. And knocks out fitness rumors. I'd like to hold a racket like this. Coming up next on Dr. Oz. Centuries healers believe the mind, body, soul connection was centered in your heart. As a heart surgeon, I love that. And maybe it does in part. But scientists have now discovered that it may happen here. In very specific areas doctors have identified where everything is connected together. The mind, the body, and the soul. This is, my friends, where religion and health seem to meet. It can make you feel connected with others. It can induce inner peace. It can make people feel connected to nature in ways never thought possible. And connected to a belief in a higher power. The simplest way to make the mind, body, soul connection, to turn on this part of the brain that now as scientists realize is truly there, is to create a sense and state of calm throughout your body. In effect, calming down the mind. Which might be the most difficult thing for any of us to do. So to figure it out, we set up our own experiment to see if you possess an easy switch to turn off chaos and turn on calm. These women, Jaina, Janvayev, and Elizabeth, have been here off stage for the past hour watching two types of videos. Some of them nerve wracking, and some of them very soothing. Ladies, please come out and join me. They've been monitored by the way. Their heart rates have been checked. Their blood pressure this whole time. They're so deep in trance they're not even getting up to come over yet. Hopefully they will. Here they are. Welcome Jaina. Welcome to the show. Hi, I'm Janvayev. Janvayev, how are you? Nice to meet you. Thank you very much for being part of our experiment. Thank you. It takes a lot. I know to sit for an hour and go through these different experiments, and it was very important I think for everyone to see what happens. So Jaina, if you don't mind, describe this chaotic video, the first part of what you experienced. It was crazy. A lot of fire trucks, sirens, crying babies, breaking glass. It was, I'm a mother of three, so it's a little chaotic. So it had me going. That's day to day life for some folks. Yes. And Janvayev, what did it seem like to you as you watched those scenes go by? It made me very anxious. It made me feel like I had to be there and do something, and it made me feel like I was eager and like on the tip of my seat. And then once it switched over, it was completely different. It switched over to a calmer scene. A calm video, yeah. So I want to show you how chaos versus calm affects your blood pressure and affects your heart rate. And we did a little experiment. So in all three of your cases, we monitored those, and in all three of you, all three of you, even Janvayev, you have excellent blood pressure as your baseline. You had an excellent response and a drop in heart rate. That's a reflection of me that something that we never thought was changeable before could be altered just by what your mind is processing. And for women, this is a big issue. It's what I want to do this show about because your mind's erasing all the time. Now, Elizabeth, you actually had the most dramatic shifts. Yes. You went in that chaotic zone, and I'll put the numbers up here. You were actually in a dangerous spot. So notice in chaos, all three of you had blood pressures that were all over the place. And for Elizabeth, yours is an area that I would actually have treated with medications. Let's go to calmness. Let me see what happened. Just for the few seconds of calm, look what happened. Elizabeth, your blood pressure dropped down dramatically. Yes. That is called the relaxation response. Did you feel relaxed? I felt very relaxed. Yes. Very, very relaxed. When the scenes come up with the yoga, the nice calm music, it relaxed me. It's good. I tell you, the idea that we could, just with the mind-body-soul connection, create the same kind of response that a medication would offer you reveals the power that we have just in ourselves. And it's all yours. And all it comes down to is how do you tune in to that mind-body-soul connection? How do you find that? So, Elizabeth, as you sat there, you say you sensed this happening. Do you think this is the kind of tool that you could use in your life? Most definitely, yes. By using calm sounds, relaxation music, I think it could definitely help me versus trying to take medication because that I don't want to do. A lot of us don't. No. Not at all. I actually pulled together all the scientific research around the mind-body-soul connection and I made a little animation. I'm going to show you. I'm going to walk over here and demonstrate for everybody how this relaxation response, that's what it's called, can actually calm down your whole body. And don't forget what Elizabeth said. She went from being hypertensive to having a normal blood pressure just with this. So, as you start to see these calmer sounds, you go from an anxious place where you're breathing really fast. And that's one of the first things that happens when you're anxious, to a slower breathing process. And as you slow your breath, the heart, which is responsible for pumping blood, goes from really, really fast and like a little pitter-patter hummingbird to slowing down and allowing it to pour its blood through the major artery, which goes from being really constricted like a fire hydrant about to burst to relaxed. Instead of being clenched tight, it opens up and then the brain, instead of sending rapid sensories to all over the body, messages that panic and run away, it begins to calm itself also. And as your brain waves begin to slow down, even through the nervous system, through your spinal cord, you begin to calm down. All these sensations so many of us have as our brain begins to race like a hamster in a wheel, trying to cope with the modern world, begins to be addressed. So, I've asked two experts to join me. Dr. Khoury Choudhury is one of the nation's leading neurologists, and Reverend Michael Beckwith is a minister and author who's worked with the Dalai Lama and many others. They're both here to help us today to better understand how this actually plays a role. And as experts, I trust your opinions on this because it's such a new area of investigation. So Dr. Beckwith, you're a man of religion, of spirit. How does the relaxation response help us connect the mind, the body, to the soul, a part of the equation that we've often ignored? And if you don't mind, if I can ask a provocative question of whether you have to go to church, do you have to be a religious person to tap into this wisdom? Not at all. You know, we're spiritual beings. We're having a human incarnation. And so as a spiritual being, that part of us is eternal, it's forever. And we have a mind and we have a body. And so it is that spiritual dimension of us that gets to express through the mind and through the body. So when we begin to have a conversation or a relationship with the higher power, you can call it God, you can call it love, you can call it intelligence, you can call it life, consciousness, whatever you choose to call it, when you begin to have a relationship with it, then there's much more relaxation, there's much more availability to insight and wisdom and guidance. You don't have to be a Christian. You don't have to be a Catholic. You don't have to be anything. But just having that conversation, just having that availability allows you to have more availability to innate wisdom. You know, scientific studies have proven individuals who pray, individuals who meditate, individuals who are in spiritual community, have more access to a healthier life, physically, mentally and spiritually. Well, I've seen so much of that information, which is why I'm always pained when we ignore that reality. As a man of faith, why do you feel so passionately about how we can use this mind-body-soul connection to help our bodies? Well, you know, we have a body temple. We need to honor the body temple. Now, as a spiritual being, there's a wonderful destiny within us. There's talents, gifts, capacities that need to be shared. And if our body is healthy, mental body, emotional body, physical body is healthy, then we have a greater opportunity to express what's inherent within us. If we're not taking care of the body temple, we're hypochondriac, we're always sick, then that's less time that we can be spending being of service to the planet, helping other people and living a much more profound and higher life. So let me get practical about this, but again, Dr. Kubrick, what is your favorite way, you personally and also for your patients, to tune into that mind-body-soul connection? One of the things that I personally practice is how can I start to change thought patterns? Now, being human means you're going to have bad moments. And one of the most common things that I've seen in myself and with patients is we tend to complain. We're a society where complaining is really, really legitimate. And so what I try to do is I try to follow up a complaint with some piece of gratitude. And I can actually feel the physiological shift in my body when I do it. Everyone can do this right now, everyone at home, everyone in the audience. It's free, too. Free, exactly. Think of something. One thought of gratitude. Dr. Beckwith, what about you? What's a practical way that you apply this in your own life and how do you share it with your congregations? Well, I agree that thoughts are units of mental energy that have the tendency to transmute themselves into behavior, experience. And what I've noticed is that people suffer from intention deficit disorder. They don't have any intention. They allow the world to govern their intention. So I invite people to start their day, every single day, establishing their own intention to basically say something to themselves like, I'm available to more good than I've ever experienced this day. I am open and receptive to such happiness and love and success as I move through this day. In other words, don't be a self-fulfilling prophecy of negativity by complaining or by bemoaning your fate. Establish your own intention and then watch how that energy moves you in that direction and you end up living a life better than you're even imagining. I love the fact that you're talking about health so poetically. I do think we've given up a lot of opportunities in our country not using the temples of faith to push a message of health because obviously the temple of the soul is how we're often are judged. It's something that's so dear to us yet we often forget. Thank you for the wonderful advice. When we come back, the simplest way to make the mind-body-soul connection, stay here. Coming up. One of my biggest personal struggles. Dr. Oz says he's a terrible meditator. Who's had difficulty meditating? But this man says anyone can do it. Even you. It can change your health. Ready to learn? In 10 minutes. In just 10 minutes. That's next. Thank you very much for joining me. Well stated. We are clear. Let's move on. Richard Simmons. Behind the Rhinestones. What were you like as a kid? How an overweight teen changed his life and inspired millions. Because of you, I'm still here. All new Dr. Oz. That's coming up tomorrow. Mind-body-soul connection is by meditating. You get? That's what I'm talking about. One of my biggest personal struggles. I am the worst student when it comes to actually making this part of my daily routine. Take a look. We can probably thank the Beatles for introducing meditation to America after their famous trip to India almost half a century ago. Since then, celebrities have made meditation cool, but doctors have proven it has amazing health benefits. As many as 20 million Americans now make it part of their routine, including, at least some of the time, me. Like many things in my life that have gone well, I have to credit my wife Lisa for introducing me to meditation. I never thought meditation would work with me. I'm a terrible meditator, I think, at my very core, because my mind is racing continually. If you can't slow down, then you can't calm down, and therein lies the challenge. My problems with meditation led me to this man, Andy Pudicombe, because he's found the recipe to make meditation a simple part of everyday life. Leave the thinking behind. My mission now is really to kind of make meditation more accessible, to demystify, and to make it more relevant to people. Andy gave up college life in his early 20s to become a Buddhist monk, but he says you don't have to give up your life to get the exact same benefits. I'm definitely not recommending that people go off and become monks to get the benefit from meditation. I can show you in just 10 minutes, with some really simple meditation methods, how you can train your mind for a healthier and happier life. Anybody can do this, even you. Andy's joining us. Why did a 22-year-old give up the modern life to become a monk? That's a good question. You know, I was a regular guy. I was training in sports science at college. I was just having a really kind of tough time. You know, I had a couple of really difficult things happen in my late teens. I lost my stepsister in an accident, and my mind was really kind of just overactive, you know, so busy. I think most people can kind of relate to that. Emotionally, I was kind of very reactive, and I tried to find different ways to deal with that. You know, I probably did, I probably drank a little bit more than I should have done. I probably ate a little bit more than I should have done, maybe even dated a little bit more than I should have done, and none of it really kind of hit the spot. You know, they were great temporary distractions, but it didn't really kind of, you know, hit the spot. So I'd heard about these monks and nuns in the Himalayas, and one day I just made the decision, and I quit college, and I set off for India. You quit life, some might say, but in fact, maybe you found it. For me, I found it. You know, I'm very lucky. I started the Headspace Project probably about three years ago. We already have close to a million active users. These are people like you and me, taking 10 minutes out a day to get a healthier and happier mind. So I mentioned to everyone in that little tape piece, I've had a really difficult time quieting my mind. Who in the audience, to be honest, who's had difficulty meditating? Just about everybody. Yeah, wow. I think this is America. We're having a difficult time doing this. So there are two women in the very same boat as me, and frankly, everyone else in the audience. Let's meet Colette and Debra. They're over here. Come on, join us. Colette, how are you? Good. Why are you finding it so hard to meditate, do you think, Colette? You know, I've always been very active, never really slowed down, fast-moving. And also, I feel like it's very time-consuming. So I'm going to do a little game with you, if you don't mind. I'm going to be part of it as well. I would love if you just take some of these pens and write down the meditation stereotypes that you hold already. Just write down thoughts that you may describe, typically, of people who meditate. Let me join you, if you don't mind. You've got calm, what is that word? Eating. Meditating, people eat? Eating granola. Oh, eating granola. All right. As opposed to just eating. That's right. Cross legs. Chanting. Chanting, yeah. I mean, I'd write, you know, some people might write hippie, right, this is not really for me. Yoga. I think the big thing for me, with that question, they must have a lot of free time. Yes. Because I don't know how you get enough time to do that. And that becomes a major challenge. So Andy, how do we do greatest, if you don't mind? What I would say, and I say this, you know, I'm now, I'm not a monk anymore. You know, I have a wife. I have a really kind of busy job. I'm with you guys. I know how hard it is to find that time in the day. So I'm just going to ask you to find one thing for me in the day. You know, you don't need any of these. All you need is just 10 minutes. That's all I'm going to ask for. And I'm going to show you exactly how you do it. In 10 minutes? In just 10 minutes. I'll tell you, I'll make a deal with you. I'm going to show everybody what goes on in the brain with just a few minutes of meditation and you teach us how to do it. Fair enough? All right. Come back with me. These are brain scans of people. And remember, these are folks who are sort of in different places in life. Non-meditators, people like me and most of the folks in the audience, is this top image. Now, one little point here. The yellow means more blood supply. The green means less blood supply. So you want to get yellows and reds. Notice in this top non-meditating image, way up there. It's all green. There's not a lot of blood going to the front of the brain in that picture. Look what happens to the meditator. This part of the brain has all lit up. It's all yellow in comparison. What that indicates is that by meditating, this person pushed more blood to the parts of the brain that we know are important to making this mind-body-soul connection. These are the same parts of the brain that gives you a deep sense and gives you this experience of happiness and calm, which so many of us seek and drive. Let's walk on over here. You all have 10 minutes? Can I hear that? You all have 10 minutes. Come on over. Sorry. I'll have you all sit. I'll do it with you. We're not going to do the 10-minute meditation right now, but we're going to show you how you would start the 10-minute meditation. Go ahead. You've got a timer there, I guess. Got a timer. Yes. So if you're not using ... So I have an app. It's a free app to download. It's a Headspace app. If you want to use that, and that will guide you through. If you don't, then you might like to get a timer or set, if you're doing this at home, just set an alarm on your phone, just so you know when 10 minutes is up and you're not late to work. I don't want you blaming me for being late. It'll work. Okay. So to begin with, the best thing you can do is to find a place where you're going to be undisturbed for 10 minutes. Okay? And I just want you to sit upright on the chair with your arms and legs uncrossed, and you can do this anywhere, by the way, and we're going to do it in such a way that you don't look kind of weird. So you could even do this on the train, on the way to work, or not in the car, but anywhere you like. Okay? So sit up straight. Just relax the hands on the legs or on the lap. And I'd just like you to take one big, deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. And as you breathe out through the mouth, just gently closing the eyes and just feeling the weight of the body on the chair. And starting at the top of the head, I'd just like you to gently, mentally scan down through the body, just noticing how the body feels. So not trying to change anything, just noticing what feels comfortable, what feels uncomfortable as you work your way down towards the toes. Just have a go at that now. So Annie has kindly agreed to do is to create a special 10-minute meditation video for all of us. You can practice this at home. It's on DrOz.com. It's free. Give it a shot. Get a little wet. Get just beneath the waves of life where the calmness lies, and you'll harvest the mind-body-soul connection. We'll be right back. Up next, tennis superstar Venus Williams. You were faced with perhaps your greatest opponent of all. Her baffling illness. Why did it stay a mystery for so long? And later, a test she wasn't expecting. Stay with us. Dr. Oz wants to know, what are you eating that's Oz approved? Quinoa with avocado, almonds, green peppers, garlic, and onions. What are you eating? Ready to share it? Send Dr. Oz a picture of your dish on Twitter with hashtag Ozapproved. Talk about their bodies. They can teach me, teach all of us, a lot. Today, one of the all-time tennis greats, Venus Williams, is here. Wonderful. Thank you so much. These are fabulous. Thank you. Oh my goodness. We'll talk about that and lots of other things. Well, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Nice to see you. It's been a while. Yes, we actually played a little bit once, and she whipped me. It was very unfortunate. It's not true, actually. It was dead even. I don't think so. Are you loving the game as much as when you first started? I am. I love tennis. In fact, I'm even more grateful now as I realize what a wonderful opportunity it's been to live my dreams day in and day out, so still loving the game. If you don't mind, I'm going to transition to that hair, which is absolutely spectacular. You made a lot of headlines at the U.S. Open with the braids. They were purple. Yes. I call it magenta. Magenta. Yes. In real life, it's a little different. It's a pink highlight under there, too. Oh, yes. Very elegantly done. This must take a little while to do. It does. Once it's done, then you're done. All you do is, if you want to put in the bun or don't want to do anything at all, then it's the easiest hair ever. I call it my fantasy hair, though. Fantasy hair? Why is that? You just feel fabulous, even if you're sweating. That's the best way to explain it. You look like a little girl, which is a compliment, but you're 33 years of age, if I can share that, because it's pretty public. At some point, does it ever cross your mind that maybe you'll stop playing tennis? You'll retire? You know, tennis has been a part of my life ever since before I can remember, so of course there'll be a day. The day is not now. Oh, my God. Why are you showing that picture? There she is. 1990. Can you tell? But, you know, for us, Serena and I, we're always talking about going to Rio, so we'd like to get to the Olympics at least one more time. That's our goal for me. One of the reasons I wanted to speak with you on set today was in 2011, you were faced with perhaps your greatest opponent of all, and you have not spoken much about this. Would you mind sharing with your audience the experience you had with this illness, and why did it stay a mystery to you and your doctors for so long? Well, because, you know, it's challenging. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Children's Syndrome, and the reason it stayed such a mystery is because the symptoms are so ambiguous, and the average diagnosis time is about seven years, and that's what happened to me. Seven years. Yeah. It took about seven years. Yeah. Venus Williams had an ailment. Yeah. With all the medical care you could get, it still took seven years. It took seven years. For me, the beginning in my head, it started in 2004, and I would always say, I couldn't get in shape, and I would always say, okay, this time I'm really going to get in shape. And no matter what I did, I never had any wind. So I was out there just faking it, you know, like I was fine, and then every now and then after a big loss, I would say, gosh, something's wrong, and I'd go get another workup, and then I'd just wait another six months. So that was my life. I would just keep going, getting workups, and there were no answers, and as an athlete, you don't make excuses. Either you do it or you don't. So in my head, I just thought, oh, maybe I'm just kind of lazy, you know? That's what I would think. Well, you know, I must say that this is a big issue for me, because so many women are walking around with autoimmune problems. Sjogren's syndrome, your diagnosis, as you mentioned, afflicts mostly women, 90% of the time, and it's hard to diagnose it, so don't give up on yourself. So if it's okay, I'd love to show everybody a little bit more about this illness and how it affects the body, and I'm going to do it with some help from my studio audience, something new, brand new, and we're calling it Dr. Oz Theater. For the episode, you're going to get to help me a little bit, because I appreciate it. Our bodies require lots of moisture to remain happy and healthy, and we have tear ducts in here, one of the main sources, and we have salivary glands over here, and they're always pouring fluid into our eyes, into our mouth, to keep our eyes and mouth moist, which is one of the first signs in the autoimmune problem you have, Sjogren's syndrome. Enter immune cells. Now, our body is filled with cells that fight off invaders, foreign invaders that are attacking you like viruses and bacteria, but in Sjogren's syndrome, the immune cells, grab some of these, they don't like it, they get confused, and whoa! When they get confused, they're really unhappy, and when they're unhappy, these cells, they start to attack the tear ducts, and they're salivary glands, as though they were foreign invaders, and they begin to rip them and tear them, and there's these tear ducts in salivary glands trying to fight back, they can't do it, and in most cases of Sjogren's syndrome, the sufferers must cope with a dry mouth and a dry eye, because they're completely incapacitated in their ability to make moisture. That is my explanation of Sjogren's syndrome in Dr. Oz's theater. Thank you very much. Please take a bow. Where? That's going on Broadway. Does that clarify it a bit? Yeah, that does, and for me, the dry eyes came last. I had fatigue first, and then joint pain next. With treatment, I've gotten a lot better, and I'm able to live an everyday life a lot more comfortably. How do you change your lifestyle to cope with it? What are you eating differently? I learned that I could heal myself, or help myself through a lot of things that I ate and a lot of things that I could give up, so I had to give up a lot of sugar, and I at one point was a really strict raw vegan, but I'm a Cheegan, so there was a cheese plate in the back, and I may have had a tiny piece. A Cheegan? I may or may not, if there was a camera on, and you caught me, but . . . . We may have caught you. So I'm not perfect, but I had to change my diet a lot, and it helps me a lot. We talked earlier in the show about the mind-body-soul connection. Has that played a role in your ability to cope with this? Definitely. You have to stay positive, because it can be a negative experience, and for me, it hasn't been easy, but you have to stay positive, and you have to keep going. I want to keep going with you. If you'll stay with us, we've got a little game to play together. Okay. We're going to test your medical knowledge. All right. Ready? Here we go. We'll be right back. Up next, the pressure zone. Oh, I like this. It's called Venus Fly Trap, so expect a few surprises. Can a woman reduce cellulite with exercise? Do you know the answer? And later, false eyelashes. Do you know how hard this is for a guy to do? The popular beauty trend that may put you at risk. Richard Simmons, behind the Rhinestones . . . . What were you like as a kid? . . . . how an overweight teen changed his life and inspired millions . . . . Because of you, I'm still here. All new, Dr. Oz. That's coming up tomorrow. Back with a very inspirational tennis superstar, Venus Williams. Now, you just launched a new web initiative. Yes. It is called Fitness Journey. Is that right? And it's to help women. So how does it work? It's to help people. I have a clothing line called Eleven. And actually, that's why my hair is this color, because it matched what I was wearing at the U.S. Open. Okay. So the current line. But health is extremely important to me, and I wanted people to understand how to eat healthy, how to move their bodies, how to do healthy things for themselves. And the fitness journey is that everybody wants to feel good on the inside and look good on the outside. So it helps people be able to do that and find how to do that. But not only do that, but maintain that, which is one of the toughest parts. So that's what the fitness journey is about. I can't think of a better person to be the ambassador for. So I'm going to challenge you to a game. Let's see how fitness knowledgeable you are. Okay. Are you ready? So we're going to put this little test together. It's a game called Venus Fly Trap. Come on over here. I built this specially for you. You'll notice you get game. Here's how the game works. You need to hit a tennis ball through the squares on that board. If you hit it through one of the squares, I'm going to ask you a question based on whatever squares. And here's why the audience should care. If you get five right, everybody in the audience is going home with one of these fun Dr. Oz stress balls. So they're really exciting. You guys are always doing that. You're going like this all the time. All right. Now here's your ball. Oh, I forgot. There's one little catch. Okay. There's one little catch. As you know, if it's a Venus Fly Trap, then you actually need to have a fly trap. So I've got two Venus Fly Traps to try and block your shots. Come on out, Venus Fly Traps. Oh, it seems so unfair. Boo. The audience is unhappy. All right. Are you ready? I think so. Let's see what you can do. Knock them down. Let's see what you can do. 100 mile an hour serves. Take it away. I'm so sorry. It's okay. Okay. Here's your question. Can a woman reduce cellulite with exercise? Audience, what do you think? He's the smartest audience in television. I would say yes. She's right. You absolutely can. All right. Let's see what those Venus Fly Traps can do. I'm too aggressive. I'm sorry. I like to hold the racket like this. I'm nervous. You know? I want everyone to have stress balls. I know. She's going to club me with the racket soon. Okay. Let's see how you can do. Ready? That's okay. It doesn't count. No, it doesn't count. It comes back at you. Natural product can help heal itchy skin. Is it egg whites, avocado oil, or cheeseburgers and french fries? You got it. She's so good. When you're done with tennis, you stop fooling around with the tennis thing, you can come to me, Doctor, if you want. Thank you. You'll be very good at it. Honorary? Honorary. Immediately. From Doctor Ashok, right? From Doctor Ashok. Let's see what she's got now. Ready? Go. There you go. Skin deep. The best snack to promote clear skin is pickles, almonds, or cherry pie. Audience. Commons. Yes. Very well done. I'll distract and you get the middle. Ready, go. Okay, ready. Poor Serena. What advice has your sister Serena said she would give to her younger self? Would it be to play golf because tennis is too darn hard, is it to watch your temper, or is it to get enough sleep and drink before, I'm sorry, to get enough sleep and drink more water? Get enough sleep. I'm going with what the audience says. Sleep? Yes. They know your sister well. Okay. Away from winning it all. So, are you ready? Ready. Go. What activity does Jane Fonda say can be better than ever for her at age 75? Is it A, aerobics, B, balancing a checkbook, or C, sex? Sex. C. Sex. Sex it is. She won. Up next, they're popular and trendy. What do you think of mine? False eyelashes. Can you really rip them off? No, gently. Ah, ah. But are you putting yourself at risk? Have you experienced that? Yes, I have. The trickiest part of false lashes. And later, to pick or not to pick. Have you ever been caught picking your nose? I played the fifth. Stay with us. Dr. Oz is just a click away. Visit his blog for breaking medical news. Plus, get answers and advice from his dream team of experts. Go behind the curtain of The Dr. Oz Show. That was so fun. Thank you so much. Pencil, they say your eyes are the window into your soul. What do you think of mine? You know how hard this is for a guy to do? So I'm modeling one of the most popular beauty trends around fake eyelashes. I'm going to show you how to avoid problems with these. But first, I need a little help from my assistant of the day. Here's how we're going to do it. I'm going to wipe the makeup off this model. If your name is under here, I want you to come up here. Lindsey M. Come on up, Lindsey M. Thank you. Well, I heard you're a big Kim Kardashian fan. Yes, I am. Who isn't? Everybody loves her eyes, especially. They're very shaped like cat leg. How do I compare my eyes to her eyes? You have very big, full eyelashes. You don't have the little cat leg going, but you definitely have the eyelashes. So the first thing you have to do is take these off my eyes because I can't see anything. You can take them off with a little bit of water here. Okay. And then rip them off without taking my eyelids. Can you really rip them off? No, gently. Look at how perfect that is. I don't know how women wear these things. Always. We have to wear them out. We're in the supermarket. We've got to go get our mail. Anywhere we can wear them. You wear them all the time? All the time. Do you have them on now? No, not yet. But you've got to put them on. I can put these on you if you want. Can you put them on me? Please don't poke my eye out. I'm not going to do that. All right. What we're going to talk about today is eyelash, especially fake eyelash safety. Simple things. I'm going to walk you through the risks and then some smart ways to wear them if you're going to wear them. We all clear on this? Yes. The first risk, unfortunately, in putting on fake lashes is that you will apply the gluing correctly. Okay. So I built you a little model of your eyes. This is the ideal fake lash scenario. I want you to go ahead and take this. I'll get that. And go ahead and apply that as you think makes sense. Okay. See how she does. Start. You must do this a lot, I guess, huh? Oh, all the time. I even put them on just to go check my mail. You do? Who's watching to check your mail? Everybody. Oh, the whole road's out there looking at you. Oh, the whole road is looking at me putting on my eyelashes? Step by step here. I love your enthusiasm. So when you put the glue on like that, which you did quite nicely, but a lot of times people put the glue on and they'll spill a little bit. And they spill it into their eye and then you can't stay. You know, this could have formaldehyde in it, the glue, the adhesive that you use. So it can cause a lot of discomfort, even an allergic reaction. So when you apply it, even if you apply it perfectly, if you smudge it into the eye, which sometimes happens, pain. All right. That's the first mistake. Second mistake, when you actually apply the lashes. Go ahead and apply. Now, here's the deal. As you apply these eyelashes, they don't always stick perfectly. And one of the problems that we see often, that's pretty good, is these will begin to slip down like that. And they'll begin to poke into your eye. Have you experienced that? Yes, I have. And what does that feel like? It feels like somebody is poking me in the eye and it's burning. And I'm hoping that I still look good in the process of that doing so. That hot poker feeling is not what your eye desires. So besides the glue getting in your eyes and the lashes turning upside down and poking you in the eye like a hot poker, if you're wearing them for too long, it does something very different. And this can cause an infection. Come on back here. Let me show you this animation. Okay. So when you look at your eyes, this is what they look like close up. And the lashes do something very important. They catch pollen. They catch dust. They protect the eyes as they're supposed to. They're beautifully made. When you put false lashes on, you apply that glue. There it is. We spoke of earlier. And of course, it can cause a little bit of an allergic reaction. In addition, if you leave them on, they can trap dirt, bacteria, dust. It leads to infections of the eyes. And in addition, with the infection, if you leave them on overnight, it causes big, red, inflammatory response. Your eyes become crusty. They ooze. They hurt. You don't want that. Yeah, no. I don't think you look too attractive in the morning, especially if you're waking up next to somebody. I don't think they want to see that. That's very provocative, yes. Or you're going to have to get your mail or anything else. So you don't want that happening. So when we look at lashes, unfortunately, we ignore that reality. It still happens to a lot of folks. So again, if you're going to go to bed, which eventually you will, take the lashes out. The last mistake, the trickiest part of false lashes is removing them. How do you take your lashes off? I pull slowly, hopefully not ripping out the eyelashes that I actually want to keep. So if you're removing the lashes the way you had to on me, and I wet mine initially, but if you pull them off, what often happens is you pull off not just the false lashes, but your real ones, these ones. Which I already took down. You're done. Yeah. The problem with that is it's not easy to grow new eyelashes. So there's a better way of taking off your eyelashes. You actually take a little Q-tip, soak it in water. Go ahead and take that, because you're better than I am. And just wet the surface here. Wet the whole thing as you do that. As I'm pulling off the eyelash. As you wet it, by the way, three or four times, the glue comes undone anyway. So it's very easy. At least you won't pull out eyelashes unwittingly, which is the biggest harm you can do to your eye besides the inflammation I showed you earlier. So I have a suspicion that despite my desire to get you not to use as many eyelashes, you're still going to use them. Is that correct? Of course. I have to wear them. This is the fate. No matter how much people say something isn't good for you, that's going to just make you want to wear it even more, especially when you look good doing it. All right. So I'll make a little bargain if you're okay with this. I'll give you a couple tips of how you can wear your fake eyelashes, your false lashes safely. Okay. I'll go through for everybody, because I know there are many folks out there, you speaking honestly, which I appreciate. You're welcome. But a lot of folks don't. First off, if you're going to constantly use them, you're going to develop problems. So try to use them a bit more sparingly. I would not put them on to go to the mailbox. I think, you know, weddings, high school reunions, you know, big events. But don't put them on every single day. Never sleep in them. We express why that's so important. You never want to have glitter on your eyelashes, which I hope you don't do. Sometimes. Just a little bit. Never but sometimes. And then once you've had one of those allergic reactions, avoid it completely, because those can be really problematic. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. We'll be right back. Coming up, Is there a part of your body that you just love to pick? It's painless to pull that hair off. But should you? The answers will surprise you. I pick. You pick. But would you do this to your nose? You're a vampire now. Stay with us. Hey, everybody. Let's set for our next positions, please. Why with your eyes? Flat eyes. Richard Simmons. Behind the Rhinestones. What were you like as a kid? How an overweight teen changed his life and inspired millions. Because of you, I'm still here. All new Dr. Oz. That's coming up tomorrow. Not to pick. And help ourselves, there are certain parts of the body that we just love to pick. Today, we're playing a little game to see if any of that picking is okay. Here's what we're going to play. You're going to choose one of three numbers on the board and it's going to reveal one very pickable body part. Your job is tell me whether you can pick it or you can't pick it. First up is Kristen. Come on over, Kristen. Number one, number two, or number three? What do you think? What number will it be? I'm going to go with number two. All right, let's see right now. Number two, question is... Ooh, mole hair. These are unsightly hairs. They're often present, relatively painless to pull that hair out. But should you? Dr. Oz, I can't walk around with hairy moles. I'm going to have to pick it. She says pick it. Audience, what do you guys think? No! Guess what? It's okay. Thank you! It's okay. It's actually an old wives' tale that if you pick hair out of a mole, it could turn to cancer. It turns out there's no validity to that whatsoever. I'm much less concerned, actually, about a mole being cancerous if it's got hair growing out of it. It means it's been there for a long time, which is a good sign. It's the newer moles I worry about. All right, nicely done. Thank you very much. Next up is Lauren. Lauren, you have either number one or number three left. What do you think? Okay, I'm going to go with one. All right, she picks one. Here's the question. Ooh, sunburned skin. After you get sunburned, do you get a dead layer of skin on top? I mean, I pick it. I pick my mom's. I pick my dad's. I pick my brother's. I pick that all out. So you say to pick? I mean, I pick. You pick. Audience? Pick. This time the audience is right. Oh, no! Picking is a bad idea. The reason you shouldn't pick sunburned skin is that when you care, you actually can hurt the ones on the edge. So you don't want to do that. I guess I'll listen to my dad next. Yes, your dad is very wise. Okay, thank you. All right, thanks. Thanks, Lauren. All right, Charlotte is finally... Now, Charlotte has no choice at all. I never was over that! Well, it's a good choice, maybe, but it's not mole hair or sunburned skin. Okay. Number three is... nose. Picking your nose. Quite possibly the most picked of any body part. Can I ask you a question? No. Please. Have you ever been caught picking your nose? Oh, come on, Charlotte. I plead the fifth. Plead the fifth. That's fair enough. Very polite. So the question, you don't have to consult the audience on this one. Do you think you should be allowed to pick your nose or not to pick it? Can I ask the audience? Audience. Go ahead, audience. Pick it! Well, you go ahead and pick it. That's right. They all want you to say pick it. You okay with that answer? Okay, yes. You would pick your nose. Sure. You're right. I will. She's right. Changing my recommendation, I'll let you pick your nose on one condition. What is that? You got to do it the right way. So we're going to do this together. Okay. The way you do it is you put a little Kleenex on top of your fingers. Right? Don't use your bare hands. I'm left-handed. I'll go left-handed, too, then. All surgeons have ambidextrous. All right? You put it up in there, and you go, ah, like this. Like that. You go, you got to do it with me. What? Go up there like this. What? Like that. And it works. That's fine. Now, it turns out, and this is crazy, a recent study was done showing that people who eat their boogers help cure you. I tell you what, I don't know how they got them to do it, but they did a study. It helped their immune response. So I'll leave that to you to choose. I'm not going to be in that study. You're not going to be in that study. But you chose right on this one. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. I do think there are less gross ways of strengthening your immune system, so I agree with Charlotte. If you receive any email or any kind of direct marketing claiming to be from me selling you a product with my name, my image, or the show's name, got to know it's not me. To see a full list of our trusted partners, go to DrAz.com, and I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.