The real Dr. Oz

alyssamiller77
alyssamiller77 Posts: 891 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Great piece by the New Yorker that takes a long hard look at Dr. Oz's practices both as a surgeon and as Dr. Oz on his TV show. It's a long read but well worth it. If you watch his show and try to follow his ideas and methods for weight loss you definitely should take the time to read and understand this.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/02/04/130204fa_fact_specter

Replies

  • primpinxoxo
    primpinxoxo Posts: 20 Member
    Thank you for posting this!
  • psuLemon
    psuLemon Posts: 38,427 MFP Moderator
    Cliff notes?
  • alyssamiller77
    alyssamiller77 Posts: 891 Member
    Cliff notes?

    Cliff Notes:
    Lots of quotes from his peers and colleagues saying he's a qualified surgeon but latches on too easily to "alternative" medicines that not even he himself can back-up with any evidence. He's done it both in his TV and his surgical career. Had one employer who had to tell him to drop an alternative approach that had long been known to cause more harm than good. Ultimately the guy is a me first type who loves attention and uses his show to prop up "novelty" ideas that he can tout as hidden secrets that in reality have little supporting evidence.

    2 Cents:
    The Guy is a quack.
  • nanainkent
    nanainkent Posts: 350 Member
    I can't stand his show. To me it is just one long infomercial. The medical advice he gives I could get in a magazine article.
  • Erikalynne18
    Erikalynne18 Posts: 558 Member
    I've never watched the show cause he reminds me too much of Dr. Phil. I took psych as an undergraduate degree and I can tell you that most of my fellow students and teachers thought he too was a quack lol. It's good to double check things and make informed decisions for yourself :)
  • Feisty_Red
    Feisty_Red Posts: 982 Member
    But..but...but...but.. he has a fancy lab coat and everything? He has to be legit? :drinker: :drinker: :drinker: :wink:
  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,984 Member
    I'd like to go on his show and debate him.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness industry for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition
  • ladyraven68
    ladyraven68 Posts: 2,003 Member
    We don't get Dr Oz over here in the UK.

    I feel like I'm missing out.
  • Chibea
    Chibea Posts: 363 Member
    I read the same article, but I still really like him. Everybody is a mixed bag of good and no so good. He comes out more on the good side for me in my journey to good health. I enjoy the website, too.

    I don't have time to watch the show much, but when I did, I have seen lots of great visual exhibits showing me what my body looks like when I over eat. I have a problem with binge eating and he had a picture of what happens inside your body when you eat like that. Gross!!! The stomach gets really huge and infringes on all the organs...another time he had two real livers - one from an overweight person and one from a healthy person. Oh my God.. the sick liver was all grey and hard while the healthy one was pink and soft and bigger! Stuff like that really helps me stay in reality about what I am doing to my precious body when I don' t treat it well. I have an amazing skill in being able to tell myself 'it's not that bad"....

    I get what you all are saying about all the alternative products he discusses, though. I mostly ignore that stuff.
  • MaraDiaz
    MaraDiaz Posts: 4,604 Member
    The man is skilled and brilliant and maybe even sincere. If I had a heart condition I'd want him as my doctor. But I just don't trust all the product peddling he does. Maybe he thinks there is a greater good in it somewhere. I don't think so.

    Getting your nutrition and health info on an afternoon TV program, in the simplest possible terms and mostly disconnected from everything else doesn't seem much safer than getting your info on the latest blog.

    People would be better off learning as much as possible about health and human nutrition in school as part of the regular curriculum from 1st grade through 12th, not in a simple fashion but with all the chemistry and biology and all those other scary subjects behind it. I would have flunked, by the way. I suck at chemistry.
  • RhonndaJ
    RhonndaJ Posts: 1,615 Member
    Of the entire article, this is the part that concerns me the most:

    Oz sighed. “Medicine is a very religious experience,” he said. “I have my religion and you have yours. It becomes difficult for us to agree on what we think works, since so much of it is in the eye of the beholder. Data is rarely clean.” All facts come with a point of view. But his spin on it—that one can simply choose those which make sense, rather than data that happen to be true—was chilling. “You find the arguments that support your data,” he said, “and it’s my fact versus your fact.”

    While faith is all well and good, I wouldn't be willing to put my life in the hands of a faith healer, and that seems to be what he's saying here... as long as you believe, it's all good.
  • ILiftHeavyAcrylics
    ILiftHeavyAcrylics Posts: 27,732 Member
    I don't really understand the appeal. He seems sleazy to me every time I see him talk (which, granted, isn't often because I don't watch his show). The quote about wanting to take humanity back a thousand years is very telling.
  • Elvis1968
    Elvis1968 Posts: 1 Member
    We don't get Dr Oz over here in the UK.

    I feel like I'm missing out.

    Consider yourself lucky. He's a quack.
  • Sabine_Stroehm
    Sabine_Stroehm Posts: 19,263 Member
    Sounds like his show tomorrow is going to come out in support of HCG. :sick:
  • chimp517
    chimp517 Posts: 185 Member
    But he promised me Raspberry Ketones = The Gainz
  • Moxie42
    Moxie42 Posts: 1,400 Member
    I can't stand his show. To me it is just one long infomercial. The medical advice he gives I could get in a magazine article.

    ...or an advertisement in a magazine!

    What really blows my mind is that at multiple doctor offices I've been to, they always have his show playing on TV. :huh:
  • MaraDiaz
    MaraDiaz Posts: 4,604 Member
    I can't stand his show. To me it is just one long infomercial. The medical advice he gives I could get in a magazine article.

    ...or an advertisement in a magazine!

    What really blows my mind is that at multiple doctor offices I've been to, they always have his show playing on TV. :huh:

    Heh. Scary thought: Maybe those products are so bad they make you sick, requiring more trips to the doctor and more money in their pockets?

    Honestly I don't distrust raspberry ketones much more than I distrust Prozac for people who aren't suffering from severe depression, though. Lots of quackery in medicine, just not on TV.
  • Pepper2185
    Pepper2185 Posts: 994 Member
    We don't get Dr Oz over here in the UK.

    I feel like I'm missing out.

    You're better off without him.
  • jbbrannon
    jbbrannon Posts: 167 Member
    I don't ever watch Dr. Oz!!!!:
  • sallyaj
    sallyaj Posts: 207 Member
    As a health editor, I agree with many points in the article -- especially that he has "magical" views on alternative medicine. However, I have to give him this: He breaks down concepts that are difficult for a general audience to understand and leaves them with easy to grasp takeaways. Sure, he uses sensationalist displays and videos, quizzes, and other gimmicks to get the message across. TV is entertainment. His show is Infotainment. All the gimmick's keep viewers watching and support getting the message across.

    People who never read up on health but only watch his show will at least get the basics -- that french fries are not a vegetable, that sleep is important, that stress raises cortisol, which contributes to belly fat, etc. I give his show a strong B for the general audience.
  • pamwhite712
    pamwhite712 Posts: 193 Member
    The first time I saw him, I thought I'd finally seen a real life Vulcan.

    My mother lives and breathes by him. I've tried and tried to wake her up.
  • BigBrewski
    BigBrewski Posts: 922 Member
    But..but...but...but.. he has a fancy lab coat and everything? He has to be legit? :drinker: :drinker: :drinker: :wink:

    I have a fancy lab coat too...come over here and let me examine you :)
  • alyssamiller77
    alyssamiller77 Posts: 891 Member
    As a health editor, I agree with many points in the article -- especially that he has "magical" views on alternative medicine. However, I have to give him this: He breaks down concepts that are difficult for a general audience to understand and leaves them with easy to grasp takeaways. Sure, he uses sensationalist displays and videos, quizzes, and other gimmicks to get the message across. TV is entertainment. His show is Infotainment. All the gimmick's keep viewers watching and support getting the message across.

    People who never read up on health but only watch his show will at least get the basics -- that french fries are not a vegetable, that sleep is important, that stress raises cortisol, which contributes to belly fat, etc. I give his show a strong B for the general audience.

    I agree with you about the general education value of his show yes, but I don't agree with your grade for this reason. As much good as he may do by making complex concepts about our body easy to understand, he undoes all of that by embracing the idea of the "magic answer". The idea that you can eat this magical food or take this magical supplement and it will cure your weight and fitness problem destroys any good that could come from the education he offers his viewers.

    On his show he, just like the weight loss supplement and home fitness markets, plays to the fact that these folks want a simple way to lose while putting in minimal effort and not doing anything to change their lives. He offers false hope that these people will immediately latch onto that they don't have to really change what they're doing, they just need to eat these magical foods in excess to counteract their poor eating and activity habits.

    So I have hard time seeing a B for overall quality of his show when he leaves his audience with such false information in that regard.
  • sallyaj
    sallyaj Posts: 207 Member
    For an informed audience, I agree he falls short. For people who read, who actively seek health information, and who know enough to ask where's the research backing this.

    But it never ceases to astonish me the very basics that the average person doesn't know. For example, I feel like we editors repeat ad nauseum information about complex carbs versus refined carbs. And yet, every day I hear from someone who doesn't know that vegetables are carbs.

    He does get some of that type of information across to the average viewer with his short game shows and quizzes.

    But I definitely agree with the article -- that the media has put this guy on a pedestal as the voice of medicine, yet some of the ideas he pushes have no research to back them.

    And I'm sure that the content of the show is affected by sponsors as well.
  • taso42
    taso42 Posts: 8,980 Member
    Was coming here to post the article even though I have't finished reading though it yet. (Used the search and found this thread)
  • CristinaL1983
    CristinaL1983 Posts: 1,119 Member
    I remember having seen Dr. Oz some years ago and he was discussing some alternative something and I immediately wrote him off as some daytime tv quack. I am actually surprised at how professionally successful he was before the TV show stuff.

    I have to agree with the doc who said that he wouldn't trust him with his heart. Not mine either, thanks. I want someone who practices their actual craft daily +. I definitely would not want someone who preformed a procedure last week and spent his time since then pedaling his alternative science bs.

    If all he did was discuss real medicine, I think that would be great and worthy of an A or B. When he spends his time doing some fear mongering regarding GMOs and trying to discredit real science with guests who don't even have a BS, I think it deserves an F. All you do is educate people that the topic exists and release them into the world to spread ignorance and fear.
  • Rhozelyn
    Rhozelyn Posts: 201 Member
    Is he the Wizard of Oz?

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