DoctorOz: Dog the Bounty Hunter's Health Crisis & A Groundbreaking Medical Breakthrough | S11 | Ep 24

A friend in crisis. You're a ticking time bomb. A life at stake. With the heart the way it is right now, you aren't going to be here. A wake up call. Before it's too late. The choice is yours. Coming up next. Season 11 starts now. Today, an urgent update on a story that has become very personal to me. My friend Dog the bounty hunter is facing a health crisis. Just a couple of weeks ago, Dog was here, opening up about the devastating loss of his wife Beth. And how hard it was for him to let go. Dog was so distraught, he said he wasn't even able to spread Beth's ashes. Watch this. I had Dave and my brother take ashes from the barbecuer. And I spread them on the ocean. Because I didn't want to throw them ashes away. They said, you gotta give... I said, I ain't gonna throw them away. I'm not gonna spread that all over. I wouldn't have anything of her. So, the ashes are staying in the box. I'm not gonna scatter them like all these people want to do. I'm a heart surgeon. One of the unfortunate realities of heart surgery is not everyone makes it. So, I've gotta deal with grief. Folks who have been married for a long time love each other dearly and one member passes. Too often, the spouse follows along. A lot more than you'd want to be true. Just days after that interview aired, the news broke that Dog had been hospitalized for a heart emergency. When I got word he had checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice, I immediately made a crucial house call to Colorado. Take a look. I'm on my way to visit Dog the Bounty Hunter. Dog's been going through some difficult times and dark times with the death of his wife, Beth. And recently, he was hospitalized due to what was reported to be a heart emergency. Listen, Dog's in crisis and I'm concerned. So, I flew in to make a house call to assess what's going on and offer some support. I've come armed with Dog's medical records and a number of questions. Hi, sir. How are you? Good. I was worried about you. Please come in. Dog's warm welcome conceals the reality that he faces a potentially serious health crisis. Here's a man who spent close to two years as his wife's caregiver. But I wonder if Dog has thought much about caring for his own health. Thank you. First of all, thank you. Okay. I'm just glad I caught you. I felt like I was the bounty hunter trying to catch Dog. Well, the Bible says, beware. You may be surrounded by angels. You're my angel, brother. Thank you, Dog. You are surrounded by angels. I'm certain of that because as I went through your medical records, which we're not going to get to, there's many reasons for me to believe you shouldn't be sitting next to me. So if it's okay, I'm just going to ask you the typical questions that I try to use to figure out what's really happening with you. Okay. But I'm also going to address a deeper issue, which is where you are in your life. Okay. Are you being able to do the things that need to be done for you to live? It's a simple choice, black and white. Okay. How do you think you're doing now? Fifty-fifty. How so? Well, I've always had this fear that, you know, there could be something clogged because of my smoking. And I haven't told you, but I just, all of a sudden, I was working out because I have a workout place in the garage, and I couldn't breathe. And I'm like, whoa. And then I sat up, and I felt pain right in here. And a couple years ago, it happened when I was doing an arrest. And immediately, I told my guys, get me water, get me water. And I drank cold water. It went right away, instantly. You had the same thing, the shortness of breath with the pain in your chest? Yes, sir. And was the pain a pressure pain? Was it a tearing pain? Was it a sharp pain? More of a pressure, I think. Like something was sitting on your vice? Yes. Did you go see a doctor when you had the pain a couple years ago? So, I'm asking you because I'm trying to put together what I'm finding in these records. Okay. So, you said you had the same kind of pain a couple years ago. Yes, sir. Didn't see anybody about it. And the pain went away. Correct. So, I'm going to share something with you just to get going. Okay. I think you had a small heart attack when you had that pain. Because when I look at your records and there's an EKG in here, electrical lines, I see that there was some damage. Not a lot, but a little bit of damage. Which makes sense because if you have the heart attack and you kill the tissue, you won't have the pain anymore. Until something else gets blocked. Right. Now, you're a couple years later having the same pain. This time, what happens? Water doesn't work, so what do you do? I held still. It went away five, eight minutes. And then I went to the hospital. My assistant said she will not cook for me anymore unless you go. Good for her. So, yeah. So, now you're lying in the hospital. You've had a couple tests. They did a cardiogram, right? Yes, sir. On the chest. Right. And then, what happens? You end up bleeding. Did they tell you that? Everyone else says dog was released. How did you find that out? Because the medical records, it says three different times. And then when they read it three times, it's biblical, right? Right. You denied me three times. They say he left against medical advice so we had to let him go. Right. So, the hospital is basically saying tag, you're it. Right. We're not releasing you. The rats. Well, I think they're scared. They're scared that you're a ticking time bomb. And that they couldn't do what they needed to do. Right. Why'd you leave? The truth, I you know, I have fear when I, like, arrest someone and I'm worried, but I'm not afraid. And I got afraid. I got scared. And she said, don't you leave? And I said, and left. They called you. Like on the way home, called your office. And do I thank you for calling me? Thank you for answering. I want to get into why you left, Bill, because you're running from something that's chasing you faster than you can run. Right. I'm looking at you and telling you as a friend, you're a ticking time bomb. You aren't going to be here with the heart the way it is right now. And fear of death's normal. I'm surprised you don't fear death when you're chasing after convicts. When you run away from the doctor, that means you've got to do your own doctoring. So, if you don't trust the doctoring that's going on in your life, you think you're doctoring yourself well enough by yourself. Right. Well, you know, I all the time stick my foot in my mouth. And I said, after Beth left, I'm not afraid to die. Yeah, you said it on the show. Oh, I was afraid to die. I said, please let go of my heart, honey. Quit squeezing your heart. So, I take that back. I'm not afraid to, but I don't want to. I'm sitting with Dog the bounty hunter. The day before, he goes in for a critical procedure that will help us understand what's going on with his heart. I'm worried, but I'm going to examine him and talk him through the next steps in his health recovery. Dog the bounty hunter has made a career out of chasing down criminals, but at the same time he's on the run in his own life. Running away from the health problems he knows could take him down someday. That day almost came just a couple weeks ago when he was hospitalized with chest pain. After Dog checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice, I immediately flew to Colorado to give him an overdue wake-up call. Take a look. I'm on a crucial house call with Dog the bounty hunter. After his recent hospital visit due to chest pains and shortness of breath, Dog has still come into terms with the death of his wife Beth last June. He ushers me over to a private corner to see the urn holding her ashes. So, this is straight from the crematorium. That's a terrible word. We're going to take some of the fragments and I'm going to get my tribe to make me like an arrowhead or some memory thing. But most people throw them away and I thought I don't want to do that. I don't want to scatter them anywhere because they won't be there. So, my kids all have little vials that they filled up and they wear mom around their neck. What would Beth say if she was looking at you right now? If she could see all the things you're going through, all the challenges you're feeling about just staying alive? Well, my parrot died about two months before Beth left me and I was crying. And she said, why are you crying? It's a bird. I said, because I loved him. She said, Big Daddy, you're going to be so sad when I die that it's going to be okay. The Bible says, she said, the Bible says, time heals all wounds. And I looked and that's not in there. And she said, with time it'll get better. But don't you ever take my name off your chest. I promise you, honey, I won't. Beth loved you dearly and you miss her. Yes. So, let me bring her in because you know her better than anybody. How would Beth grade how you're taking care of the man she loved? Grade taking care of you. C plus. Why that grade? Why not a D minus? Alright, a D. Not a minus, a D. So, what would she be proud of and what would she be disappointed about how you're taking care of yourself? She would be proud that I turned to someone that I respect. And she would be proud of that, that I called you and admitted it. She would be, she did ask me before she passed, if I would quit smoking. Of course, I lied and said yes. So, that would be the worst thing she would be. You're still smoking, big daddy, you lied to me. Why'd you lie to her? Well, I thought I could and I lasted about two hours before I needed a cigarette. Just really, like, you know, I put a guy the other day in jail for a heroin addict. And I said, you know, you gotta get off that blah, blah, blah. And as I walked away, he goes, dog, light one for me, will ya? And I realized, wow, you know, I'm addicted to nicotine, he's addicted to heroin. One is a felony and someday maybe the other one might be. I went through Dog's records and then it was time for an examination. You see this, 94% is your oxygenation, see it's going up and down? Right. You're supposed to be 99%. Oh, really? You're supposed to get an A+. The fact that you don't have 99% means your lungs aren't getting enough oxygen into your body. If you have a heart and a lung problem, well, they're supposed to back each other up. Buddy system. Oh. So, you don't have your buddy with you. I talked to your doctors yesterday. You've had a long history of high blood pressure. They put you on medications. Correct. And while that's blowing up, I'm gonna make sure your heart's still in there. You still have a heart? Yes, sir. Big one. 148 over 97. Is that good? No, you know that's not good. No, I don't know. You're not supposed to be over 140 over 90. You're 148 over 97. Hypertension is the biggest age-old ball. It's like a fire hydrant that's popped off its lid, squirting water, scraping off that delicate lining of your arteries. Your body's gotta heal that, and you're using the bad cholesterol that you have to heal it. I'm not smoking again, right? Smoking's a major driver of it. There are a couple things though. Not sleeping well enough, general diet issues, but also the stress that you're feeling, which I get. I understand that you're having it, but your body's committing suicide without you realizing it. These numbers, we can't have them. None of these numbers are good. It was clear the next step was for Dom to have a cardiac catheterization to check for heart disease. Tomorrow you're gonna have a cardiac catheterization. There's a possibility when you have this procedure tomorrow. They're gonna get in there and find something they can't fix with the catheter. Widowmaker, or other blockages like that. They're called widowmakers because they're such critical locations that if it closes, the whole heart shuts down. But if you have that, I don't want you walking out of the hospital with a blockage called a widowmaker. Which means you gotta give up control for a little bit tomorrow. Which is hard for you. I know. So I just let them do their thing and just shut up? Tomorrow. Just give me the morning tomorrow. Just give me a couple hours of trust. Blind faith that the right will be done with you. I'm talking to these folks. I'm supporting it as much as I can. I think they're really good. But you can't sign out against medical advice again. We'll do this together. Thank you. Can I talk to your family? Yes. Who's here is baby Lisa. She heard dad was in the hospital, jumped on a plane from Hawaii and she came. Flew all the way here? Yes sir. Now it's time to enlist Dog's family to help save his life before it's too late. My goal, get Dog back to the hospital for testing. My friend Dog the bounty hunter is in trouble. After being hospitalized with chest pains, Dog checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice and finds himself at a serious crossroad. He is a ticking time bomb. Now he needs his family to give him the tough love it'll take to convince Dog to go back to the hospital before it's too late. Watch this. I met with Dog's daughter Lisa, hoping to enlist her help in saving her dad. How you holding up? It's been rough. It's been a crazy year I think. It's amazing how we live everyday thinking that nothing bad will ever happen and when things do happen we're really not prepared for them. Let's talk about fear. Which I feel a lot talking to your dad. Especially when I see him signing out against medical advice. Makes me concerned. Do you have fears as well about your dad? I definitely do. He lost his wife. He was the main caregiver of a cancer patient for two years. He just had a brand new TV show come out. He has 12 children. He's got a lot of pressure. Have you ever talked to him about his smoking? Many times. How does that go usually? It's a very one-sided conversation. It's very like... Don't rat me out baby Lisa. No more checks for you. I think every person who smokes knows it's bad for them and they know it's not healthy and he knows it's not good but at the same time I've met heroin addicts who told me that it's easier to quit heroin than it is smoking. It's a really crazy addiction. I don't want to enable that. I want him to quit. I'm trying to find out how to support your dad through a really difficult process. Right. Deal with all the realities of life. Using your love of the bathroom. I can't fix that. Right. But I can fix you. Dog. That was the only person he listened to. Someone's got to take a place. Maybe all of you working together can do that but I don't know if it's going to work. The reason I wanted to meet you because I've learned practicing medicine all these years. My biggest mistake is when I didn't have the family on my team. When your dad got sick and signed out of the hospital against medical advice, you jumped on a plane and flew her from Hawaii. We're in the middle of Colorado. That shows love. Yes. How does your family tell you in their actions how much they love you? Dog. I wouldn't trade any of them for anything. That's why I made 12 because each time I made one they got better. She is the ornery one and the stubborn of the family. I told everyone else not to come and of course she hung up on me. Can you hear me now? She did that on me. Why did you get on a plane, fly all the way here and then your dad said not to come? There was no one in this world that was going to keep me away. I love him and I wanted to make sure he was okay. I think he didn't want me here because he doesn't want to see us seeing him weak. What would Beth say to your dad if she was here? What would be her message? She was a non-smoker so just keeping him healthy and just telling him you've got to be around for all of us. You lonely dog? With the kids around I don't get but then they leave. Everything is different. Do you ever feel it would be such a bad thing if now that I left the hospital against medical advice I just had the big one right here and ended it all? Well I believe in a God and about a year ago he said how do you want to go? Fast or slow? And I said can I get back with you on that? True. And you know what if I'm flipping somebody the bird and I said fast, right? You mother****** in the ground and I died. Oh God, right? And slow, I saw that. It's terrible. So I said to him the other day I want to go prepared. Prepared? And I want advance notice. This is kind of advance notice. And tomorrow I'll be prepared. That's about the wisest thing I've ever heard. That's right. Die and prepare. That's clever. That's wise. Are you prepared Lisa to pull out all the guns to do what needs to be done for your dad? And it's not going to be standing by holding his hand. Absolutely. It's going to be the drill sergeant. We can rehab your health if we do it together. But the missing piece of the puzzle is you. Are you willing to commit right now to Lisa, to Beth who's watching, and the rest of your family that you're going to do what it takes. You have that fire in your belly to rehab your health. Yes. Lisa, I'm going to ask you to be my agent here. Absolutely. I'm going to talk to the dog all the time but I can't tell if the dog's going to tell me what needs to be told to me. Just cut and dry. I like the way you deliver it. You'll be with him tomorrow. We'll be talking continually. Yes sir. How worried are you about my dad, doctor? I'm worried about a couple things. I'm hoping we find something that we can fix with the stent and you're back here in the day and this is just a bad memory of the acute process but then we get to the big battle and the trench warfare to rehab your health. If we find something that's bad and it requires a bigger procedure it's going to take longer. But we can do it. We can do it together. What's always kept us alive is each other. That doesn't change no matter what we face. Right. As long as you commit, we'll make this happen. Thank you. Aloha. Next morning, dog arrives prepared to face his fate. So I'm just going to go over your home meds and you said no chest pain or shortness of breath walking up this morning. And about how much do you smoke a day? Two packs a day. Say there is a clogged artery and it can be stentable how do you call it? Stented? Stented, yeah. She does it then? She puts a wire down the coronary artery and once that wire is in place she can slide in balloons and remove the blockage. Before Dr. Oz got involved in this situation, Dad wasn't willing to trust the doctors and trust what was going on in the situation. So since he's gotten involved it seems now that he'll trust the doctors to do what they have to do. Calling Dr. Oz, calling Dr. Oz. Dog promised to reach out right before the procedure and true to his word Very professional. Oh, thank you. Now there's my nurse. You tell him if I die, he dies. How are you doing? So good, thank you. Yeah, we're just getting ready to start so I just wanted to talk to you. You know what? Stay focused and get it done. It is a real tribute. I think it's your years of running up to people in dangerous situations where you don't control all the variables but you control at least one, which is you. So I'm proud of you for being calm in the face of adversity. Yes sir, thank you very much. That's the speech that says don't check out the hospital again. Dog was in the midst of facing his fears, surrendering control, and placing trust in his doctors. It was a big step for the bounty hunter and soon he'll have the answers he'd been waiting for. Dog's taken an important first step but it's only the beginning of his long road to recovery. And we're going to be with him every step of the way. He's agreed to come here so he can face the results of his latest hospital tests together. We're going to make sure he makes his wife Beth proud. Now if you're just starting your journey to quit smoking or get your health back in any other way, Dog will be with you every step of the way too. Go to DrOz.com and tell us your story. We'll be right back. Pizza! Pizza made from cauliflower or rice made from sweet potato. How about tots made from broccoli. My favorite. The low carb craze has gained full steam with hundreds of products lining your grocery store shelves promising to be as good as the real thing and good for you. That's the big deal. They say it's good for you. But are these decorated veggie products really the low carb nutrient powerhouses they promise to be? Or are you being carb conned without knowing it? Well today we're after the truth. Chef Danny Boom is backstage with some members of my bite club evaluating just how close they taste to the real thing. And renowned food journalist and author of Real Food, Fake Food, Larry Olmsted tested dozens of products to help research the hefty health claims. Thank you for being here my friend. Pleasure. You have spent your career spotting these fake foods, identifying doppelgangers who are proud that they're copying the real foods that we all love and adore but aren't so good for us. So what's the draw for consumers? Well there's two real reasons Dr. Oz. One is the proliferation of these quick weight loss diets in recent years. Everybody wants a shortcut and the most popular have been the low carb diets. The second reason is all of these heavily processed foods like cheap fast food pizza, white bread products made with bleached white flour stripped of its nutrition. It gives carbs a bad name but not all carbs deserve the bad rap. Let's start with the most popular veggie substitute, the cauliflower pizza crust which I happen to like as well. Marianna says she buys at least three boxes of these a week. You know Larry who's the expert took a deep dive into this pizza, the crust anyway. He says, well actually let me ask you, are the health claims as valid as they would appear? Marianna is a very thoughtful consumer. Well, typical frozen pizza crust has between about 140 and 160 calories a serving and 25 to 31 grams of carbs. But the cauliflower pizza crust are kind of all over the place. They range from 80 to 170 calories and 8 to 26 grams of carbs. You really have to pay attention to what you're buying. That's a lot, Mary. That's a big difference between the best of the best. Up to 26 grams of carbs, that would not necessarily be a carb busting diet. No, but it's better and more vegetables than I would normally get. Let's find this out. Mary, thank you very much. Come over here. Let's answer that question. Is it really better? Explain the numbers for me. How is it possible, we have such a variety of options here, that we get up to 26 grams of carbs in cauliflower? It sounds simple. Cauliflower pizza, you'd think it's made of cauliflower. But most of these ones in the supermarket are made with some cauliflower. There's a little bit of it. Some of them, there's a lot. But they almost all also have some kind of flour, one or more kinds of oil, and then all of these other types of ingredients like xanthan gum and baking powder and salt. But one thing pretty much every pizza has is cheese. And that's where you pack in the calories. But cheese might have calories but it doesn't have carbs. Don't they have cauliflower? It says cauliflower pizza. Are there no pizza crusts that are just cauliflower? They almost all that I've seen in the supermarket have some amount of flour to help bind it together. But what you want to do is look at the ingredients. You want cauliflower first. And reward the good guys. People are working their hearts out in order to make high quality products. Reward them by looking at the labels and buying the good stuff. Where cauliflower is listed first. But it might have all the right labels. If it doesn't taste good, who cares? Right? Danny is backstage. Chef Danny is cooking up one of the lowest carb pizza crusts on the market. One that we all thought was pretty good. Chef Danny, what do we need to know when cooking with cauliflower pizza? Okay, so this is the thing. When you buy a frozen pizza, the cauliflower pizzas don't really have the same structure that you'll generally get. So what we're going to do is, my advice to you is, is heat up a really big skillet, put a tad of oil in it, maybe with a little bit of garlic and toast the bottom of the base first. Because then it holds the structure. Okay? And then the other big tip for you here is about the flavour. So my hack for you is this. Take your normal marinara sauce and reduce it down into the pan. Okay? So you're basically boiling out the water so you get this very thick paste. Placing that onto the base gives you that rich umami flavour. And that's that rich, deep, nutty flavourful, sort of like comfort feeling that you should get from a pizza. Okay? So you can have the good, but with a little bit of the flavour, it takes it a long way. I like you jiggling over there. That's nice. But what about the Bike Club members next to you? Are they enjoying it? Does it deal with their umami? Angela, tell us about what you think. Mm-hmm. I think that's very, very good. Samantha? I love it. Yeah? So, Larry, bottom line. We just saw Chef be able to make a cauliflower pizza that's a healthy one that tastes fantastic for our Bike Club members. Is this a good thing or a bad thing for our diets? I think if you buy the right one, it can be good. But you gotta remember, pizza is a treat, and cauliflower pizza is still a treat. It's not a free food. Alright. Let's get into the next big craze in low-carb swaps. Sweet potato rice. Take a look at what food influencer and blogger Talia Pollock from Party and My Plants had to say about this latest craze. It's your friend Talia. I'm here in my home kitchen, all jazzed up to tell you about a favorite healthy carb swap of mine that I know, I know you will be equally as obsessed with. Sweet potato rice. Not only do I love sweet potato rice because it is show-stoppingly stunning, but because you can truly enjoy this beauty at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. I mean, you name one other vegetable or carb that can be a delight at every turn of the day, and that can be enjoyed both sweetly and savorously. Savoriciously? You and I, Dr. Oz, can virtually high-five about its plentiful amounts of fiber, beta-carotene, and vitamin C that it brings to the plate. Virtual high-five! There it goes, Talia. Thanks for all the energy. There, you dug up the nutritional details of sweet potato rice. What did you find? Is Talia's enthusiasm warranted? It is. This is good news. A regular serving of white rice has 32 grams of carbohydrates. Sweet potato rice has only 12. That's almost a third. My goodness! It's even better with calories. 148 in a serving of white rice, just 55 in the sweet potato rice. This is really good news! It is. Alright, come on over. Finally, what about tots made from broccoli? Could these be duping you into thinking you're eating healthier than you really are? Stephanie's here, and she's heard broccoli tots have transformed dinner time for the family. They look so innocent. Here are the tots over here, and the fries. What is it you love about these? Hey, I can have the healthiness. My daughter is a super picky eater. She doesn't love broccoli, but she really loves these tater tots. Well, they do taste pretty alluring. What do you think about this, Larry? How low-carb are these tots? Well, it's hard to believe, but they actually have just as many calories and just as many carbs as the regular fries and tater tots. No! Did you know that? No. No wonder your kids love them. Yeah! They're the same thing. The good news is they're lower in fat, and they're higher in fiber and protein. Alright, so they both have 16 carbs. Fat's a little different. Alright, Larry, final answer from you. Broccoli tots, are they duping us, or is it worth a try? Well, if you're on a low-carb diet, it's not going to help you, but they do have more fiber, lower fat, and they're broccoli. We want people to eat more green vegetables, and like your kids, if the way to do that is to make them into fries, I could get behind that. Give the kids this. See what they say. Up next, the latest trend in low-carb pastas that might just make the real thing green with envy. Find out what it is. That's next. Tainted alcohol laced with methanol. How a vacation turned deadly. They told me I had until 3 p.m. to come up with the money to get a cremated. I would never receive my mother's remains. That's coming up tomorrow. Oh, you've tried the chickpea pasta and the zoodle, right? You get the shiroki noodles, which I think are fantastic, right? But there's a new pasta on the block that claims to be low-carb, packed with protein, and tastes great, too. It is called Green Pasta. But are you being duped by these big promises, or are they the answer to your low-carb prayers? We're back with food journalist Larry Olmsted with the big reveal. So, what is green pasta? These are pastas that are made from green vegetables and beans instead of flour. These ones are mostly made with green peas and edamame. Really? So, this is just crunched up edamame but put into a different shape? Yes. So, what's the allure here? Why is it so much beneficial than the tricolors we used to always have? Well, it's lower in carbs. It has about 55 grams a serving versus 75 in a traditional wheat pasta. That's a benefit. But it has a lot more protein and fiber. So, good across the board, especially if you're trying to lose weight. Yes. Let's uncover the truth about these. First off, you have the pea protein pasta. So, this is literally peas. Yep. Crunched up. They roast them to dry them, grind them into powder, add water, just like you'd make pasta. It's just flour and water, and make it into pasta. So, the best ones have just peas and water. Well, I gotta say, it does taste like peas. If I closed my eyes, I would have known these were peas not pasta, but it's close enough. And for that kind of trade-off, I would do it. And you gotta put some tomato sauce on it. Yeah. I think we should give peas a chance. Larry, it's always a pleasure. Now, I'm gonna keep my fork for an important reason, because I'm going over here to talk about the next low-carb swap, which is coming to a house near you. It's called enamami pasta. Chef Danny Boom is back. I bring my food to taste whatever you make, and it's always good. So, how low in carbs are these enamami pastas? Enamami, you've seen these things. They're sold all over the country. They're unbelievably tasty by themselves. But I never thought you could make a pasta out of them. Of course, you can make pasta out of anything. Basically, it's powder and water. What you're getting here, though, is you're getting something around the same amount of calorie intake, but it's four times more protein. But really, to me, all pastas are equal, because at the end of the day, as any nonna is in this audience, or any nonna is gonna be telling you at home, an Italian grandmother, is gonna tell you this, that it's the sauce that matters. It's about what you're gonna coat it in. It's what is gonna basically fill your mind. And I said earlier about umami, we're back with that. Umami is key in parmesan cheese. So what I do is I make a pesto, and obviously, look at the ingredients. Fresh ingredients that you can do this at home. Very, very simple. Garlic, parmesan cheese, basil, lemon, little bit of shrimp, some scallions, and then what we've got here, guys, is literally a pasta delight. So, this is the kind of meal that Danny makes. That's the best thing I've tasted all day long. That's the super stuff. I'll tell you what, the texture of this pasta goes with your pesto sauce. Right. My taste buds are still dancing thanks to you. Danny Boom, we want you to be in the front lines of breaking carb-free news at supermarkets. So, if you see a carb swap that you want us to investigate, stop, snap, and share it with us. That way we can help you get to the truth and share it with everybody else. We'll be right back. There's power in the number one. It takes only one person to make a change. Are you ready? In season 11, you're bringing the power. The power of one. Helping us solve the crime. To get to the truth. Desperate parents are poisoning their children with bleach. Sharing your story. The doctor said she probably wouldn't survive the car ride home. It only takes one. It only takes you. In season 11, we are sharing how the power of one can change everything. For my next guest, the number 11 also holds a special meaning. When he was 21 years of age, out of nowhere, Doug's body started to fail. He spent the next 11 years, 11 years confined to a bed. Doctors were baffled by his condition and no one seemed to have answers. I was a grown man laying on the floor of my house and I was unable to function. My heart was racing, the room was spinning, and I had painful cramping muscles. And sometimes my heart would beat so hard that you could put a piece of loose leaf paper on my chest and watch it flutter. I was exhausted all the time, but rest cured nothing. But being bedridden didn't stop Doug from searching to find out what was going on in his body. He is here today to share how the power of one helped him actually invent the surgery to save his own life. Please welcome Doug Lindsay. I wasn't sure what you would look like. I saw all these reports on you and the death-defying interventions you had. So let's start with the number 11. You spent 11 years bedridden. That's a long time. You dropped out of college. Your life had been normal until then. What did your doctors tell you about your symptoms? Well, the first thing, you know, again, normal college student before that. I was doing biochemistry research at KU over the summer and I came down with what they told me was mono. So then I go home and rest for a few months and that was supposed to be it, right? Then it was supposed to be okay, but instead of getting better, I got worse. And at your worst, if I understand correctly, you were lying in bed 22 hours a day. Your mom and your aunt had the similar situation. How did you learn what the underlying cause was? Most people, even in my family, the doctors can't figure out we start to flail a little bit. Yeah. So I saw a lot of doctors and they couldn't tell me what was wrong and I had already decided in my case, for my mom, I was starting to get the background I would need to help her. So I just started reading. I had a physiology text, you know, I got an endocrinology text and I started to piece together these little passages from these big books that maybe said, hey, there might be a whole class of disorders involving the autonomic nervous system and there was no dedicated autonomic investigator. So to be clear, you're not a doctor but you're, like most of the audience, plenty able to read through these books. Let me show everybody what you found. Let me show you the organ the doctor is talking about. It's called the adrenal gland. It's located right about here, just beneath your rib cage. They sit on top of your kidneys like a dunce cap. Normally, your adrenal glands, there they are, they produce hormones to help with your fight or flight response. A little bit's good, like most things, but a lot's not. Because the inner region of Doug's adrenal glands were producing so much adrenaline, it started to pour out. When they poured out, they caused symptoms like high blood pressure and a fast heart rate and even light headedness, so much so that it exhausted and wore him out. His autopilot wasn't working anymore. So Doug, once you zeroed in on your adrenals, you have to force yourself to get out of bed. Don't make a presentation to a bunch of doctors at Harvard, at NIH. These are pretty esteemed folks. Yeah. So even to get to the conference, we had to buy a row of airline seats so I could lay across them because I couldn't sit for the length of the flight. And then I'm in a reclining wheelchair because I can't sit normally long enough to do any of this stuff. So I'm there in this reclining wheelchair with my legs out in front of me. There you are. There it is. Young Doug. And so I am giving a presentation and the poster before me is the Mayo Clinic. The poster after me is from Japan. And I'm a 24-year-old college dropout in a wheelchair, outlining a treatment for my own disorder. So there were indications that there was a medication or two that might help me. And there were also indications that it might be a problem. But we sort of had to think about how could we use these drugs to potentially treat these kind of problems. And so I wanted to find a collaborator for that. And it took me a while, but eventually I started working with a guy named Dr. H. Cecil Coughlin. So he ran the autonomic nervous system lab at University of Alabama Birmingham. And he was a pioneer in the field and a gentleman. And he became my collaborator and sort of my mentor. I think it's a big takeaway for a lot of folks. There's always a doctor out there who's going to be your teammate. You can't do it all yourself, but the local doctor may not be enough either. So find the person that's right for you. You end up getting the surgery, which has never been done before. They take out that part of the gland I showed you earlier that was making all that adrenal gland. What is your health like now? So my health, you know, I'm pretty good. I'm held together by duct tape. I take about nine meds a day, and my health is sensitive. But compared to being in a situation where I could throw a snowball further than I could walk, my health is night and day. So, you know, I'm here, I'm up, I'm mobile, I drive, I sort of have a normal life. And all because of you. How can you use the power of one to solve your own medical mystery? How do you apply this to your own life? That's next. We are back talking about the power of one. After being bedridden for 11 years, Doug invented a surgery to save his own life. And now we have a surprise for him that may inspire you to start using the power of one. I want you to look at this message that I got from your aunt. Take a look. Hi, I'm Douglas' aunt, and I want to give a testimonial. My sister and I were ill for decades with no answers. When Douglas found answers, he found them for us all. And the drug treatment that he found changed my life. I am so much healthier now in my 70s than I ever was in my 30s. I want to say thank you very much, Douglas, and I love you so very much. How's it make you feel? It's a nice note for your aunt. It is. It's been amazing. I've gotten to watch her drive and ride an exercise bike and things that we never thought were in the cards. So it's been really special. So just as Doug discovered, we all have the power of one. You can actually be your own disease detective. You're in charge of your health. Don't let anyone else tell you it's hopeless. So equip yourself. Take notes, take photos, get witnesses, right? Click your symptoms like a detective, and then ask questions, right? It's okay to challenge doctors. I'm telling you that right now, guys. We don't mind being challenged. It makes us better doctors. So if you or someone you love have symptoms you can't figure out, my team and Doug want to hear from you. Go to DoctorEyes.com, share your story. Remember, everybody, the power of change lies in the power of you. Just one person with one's voice. That's all it takes. Speaking the truth, seeking the truth. Goodbye, everybody.