Dr. Oz's Webcast Transcript

Dr. Oz: Yeah.

Oprah: I feel noticeably different. Yeah.

Dr. Oz: Well, you know, things can work as a placebo.

Oprah: Yeah.

Dr. Oz: They can work because they've got energy.

Oprah: Yeah.

Dr. Oz: And they can work because they have mechanisms we don't understand. All of them are reasonable. It's very challenging for us to open our minds up. Because as much as we like to think of medicine—

Oprah: Do you want some tea, by the way?

Dr. Oz: No, thank you.

Oprah: Okay, good.

Dr. Oz: I don't want to get lemon on my lips.

Oprah: You don't want to get lemon. It's really good and won't keep you up. It's noncaffeine.

Dr. Oz: Thank you for offering. But, you know, so frequently when we go through medical school we are taught in a very organized way about how to learn topics. The organs, for example. It's all based on organs. We actually separate the mind from the body on purpose. Because it's easier to teach about the body if you don't have to worry about the mind getting involved in the process.

Oprah: Do you think that's going to be the way of teaching in the future?

Dr. Oz: Oh, no. It's going to have to change. It has to change.

Oprah: Yeah. Because there are everybody— isn't it mostly accepted now that there is a mind-body connection?

Dr. Oz: It is absolutely. And as we advance scientific knowledge on medicine more and more, we realize that we don't have all the answers.

Oprah: Well, good.

Dr. Oz: There was a while 50 years ago at the height of this passion we had for scientific studies of the body where we really thought that we'd figure it all out with science. But at a certain point you realize, you know, that's not enough. That's not going to answer all the questions that the people who come to us for healing need. We're going to have to go one step past that.

Oprah: So are doctors in med school now being taught differently than you were taught?

Dr. Oz: Yes. There is much more open discussion about the role you have as a humanitarian. There are whole foundations. The Gold Foundation, for example, who was a pediatric neurologist at my hospital woke up one day about 20 years ago and said, "You know what? We're not teaching these doctors to be humans. We're teaching them to be technocrats. And when I'm sick, I don't want a technician opposite me. I want someone to hold my hand. Look at me in the eyes. Understand what I'm feeling." Because suffering and hope are not just things you can take care of with pills and surgery. You know, I like to heal with steel. But if you're going to make someone who is suffering feel better, you're going to do it by giving them hope and giving them a way of thinking about their life.

Oprah: That's so interesting because that's what Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor who was, you know, a brain scientist prior to her stroke, that's what she writes about in My Stroke of Insight that when she became the patient, she understood even more.

Dr. Oz: If you want to get a great doctor, have the doctor who has the disease you're being treated for. My biggest shortcoming I think as a healer is I study the heart, I love the heart, I'm passionate about it, I've had wonderful teachers, but I don't have heart disease. So when I'm teaching a patient about the heart, I'm just parroting back what I've been taught by my patients and by my teachers. If I actually had the problem, now I have a whole different perspective on it.

Oprah: Yeah. It's like being trained—having a trainer who used to be a fat person.

Dr. Oz: Yes? They're the best trainers.

Oprah: Okay. Claudia from Franklin, Tennessee, is on the phone. Hi. I remember Franklin, Tennessee. Hi, Claudia.

Claudia: Hi.

Oprah: Hi.

Claudia: How are you, Dr. Oz and Oprah?

Dr. Oz: Hi, Claudia.

Claudia: I have a question about medical records. I've read that some places are putting medical records online now, and I'm wondering if you have an opinion on that and do you think that will someday become a tool for patients to ensure that their records are more accurate and maybe even put accountability in there knowing the doctors are going to have to put something in there the patients will be reading?

Dr. Oz: Claudia, this is happening and it's happening quickly. Those of you out there watching, please put this on your radar screen. Health Vault, which is the Microsoft product, and Google Health. Both of these large companies are making it easy for us as physicians and hospitals to put information, your information on a secure website that you control. So here's the game. I don't want to own your medical records. I don't want to have to control them. I want you to be able to tell me where you want it to go.

Oprah: Absolutely.

Dr. Oz: But we don't want to have a vacuum like we've had historically because doctors use this. They use a pen to keep records. And we should take advantage. You know just when American is going into the 21st century, medicine is going into the 19th century. We really have to leap frog it. I think actually one of the most important things that this administration is going to accomplish in healthcare, besides insuring kids, is to make it easy for us to get those medical records out there. And here's why it's important to you. Here's why you should care. Number one, if I don't understand the ramifications of what I'm doing to you, and I can't collect all the people being treated that way, I can't improve myself. The only data that I get is data that I'm getting because some company paid for a trial. I need to get information that's real. That tells what's really happening in America when we get this operation and that medication and you as a patient, you should have the ability to go into this system and say, "Okay, out of all the other 50-year-old white women who have hypertension, who are not heavy, how did they fare with this drug?" You should have that data. You don't have it today. We have that at our fingertips. I have that for every other thing you might do in your life from banking to media to your hairdresser even. I don't have that in medicine. And we're going to get that I think over the next year or two. It's—I'm very excited about it. So keep those two things on your radar screen.