Dr. Oz's Webcast Transcript

Oprah: Yeah. It's a new administration. Just before I came down here I was checking. It's six days, nine hours, and 29 minutes before we—

Dr. Oz: But who's counting?

Oprah: Okay. But who's counting? Before the inauguration. Okay. Our next phone caller. Thank you, Claudia. We have another Claudia on the phone. She's from Connecticut.

Claudia: Hi, Oprah. Hi, Dr. Oz.

Oprah: Two Claudias in a row.

Claudia: Thank you so much for taking my call.

Oprah: You're up.

Claudia: I have had recent blood work done in which I had a very high reading of something called the c-reactive protein. As a 46-year-old overweight menopausal and cancer survivor, I am very concerned as to what this might indicate.

Dr. Oz: C-reactive protein is a broad, all-out war that your body's immune system is waging. And it doesn't tell us what it's waging it against. It just tells us that there's a battle going on. So when we see it, it's as important a predictor of heart problems as your cholesterol.

Oprah: Wow.

Dr. Oz: So it's a big deal. Your normal levels are less than 1, ideally. If it's more than 3, we get a little concerned. If you've got an autoimmune problem like lupus, then it's going to be even more than 10. So we're most concerned about getting it, if you don't have some big autoimmune problem. The number one thing I would do is to make sure you don't have an obvious infection somewhere like gingivitis or vaginitis. I mentioned probiotics, very effective for a lot of people in reducing c-reactive protein. Obesity is a big problem with c-reactive protein because it actually—those cells become alive and they begin to secrete your hormones. That's where the issue is with hormone replacement therapy. If you have a lot of extra weight onboard, those fat cells actually make estrogen. So they throw off your levels. So it's much harder for the ovary, which is struggling anyway at the very end of its life, to sort of keep up with the right amount of estrogen. If you have the wrong amount of estrogen, too much of it with no progesterone, you get those hot flashes. So those three things are what I would focus on first. But you want to find out why it's elevated. It's a warning symptom to you, and you want to treat it.

Claudia: Thank you very much.

Dr. Oz: You're welcome.

Oprah: The two Claudias in a row. Thanks Claudia. Thank you very much. Coming to us via Skype from the other side of the world in Shanghai, China, are newlyweds Terry and Clare. Hi, guys.

Terry: Hi, Oprah. Hi, how are you? 

Clare: Hi.

Terry: How are you?

Oprah: This is what thrills me about this. So what's behind you? I'm curious, what's behind—what room are you in and what's behind your head there?

Terry: We're in the living room and just behind me, we're ready for the Chinese New Year celebration, so we have things on our special tree.

Oprah: Oh, okay, great. You're right. It's sort of like the—I love this. It's a global classroom.

Dr. Oz: It is. It's a conversation.

Oprah: It's a conversation. Okay, guys. Your question. Thank you. Your question?

Terry: Yes. Hi, Dr. Oz. Nice to see you.

Dr. Oz: Thank you.

Terry: One thing we've been here now for a year since we've been married, and before I came here, I'm a typical English person. I was eating convenience fast food, sweet cookies, chocolate the usual bad things. And once we came here, my wife started me on eating a much healthier diet of fresh vegetables, fish, special produced soup and many other types of foods of that type. But after six months, I started to notice some changes in my body. Especially my body hair. My wife said to me one day, "Your biceps up here have got more hair than they had before. You've got hair that you never had before." And then I started to look all over my body and I—I had gray hair on my chest, which had disappeared. My chest suddenly became full of hair at least five times more than I had before. On my shoulders and suddenly I had a—my butt was suddenly becoming full of hair, which was really dark black. You couldn't help but say, "Hello, is he turning into a gorilla? What's happening to my husband?" So what we want to ask the question is, why is this hair growing everywhere, which I didn't have before except on my head where I really would like it?

Dr. Oz: Do you have a Simian crease, by the way?

Terry: Sorry?

Dr. Oz: Do you have a Simian crease? Down what that is? It's a crease the primates—it's a crease the primates have along their palm. In any case—

Terry: Oh, on my palm, maybe I do.

Dr. Oz: No, I'm joking. You don't because if you did, you wouldn't be a human. It's a single crease across the palm. You know, I—I love questions like this because you're an anecdote, right? You've got a specific story that's very personal to you. But you put a lot of anecdotes together, maybe it becomes data. Maybe all of a sudden we've got enough pieces of evidence so there are people out there watching this who might have a similar experience as you.

Oprah: You're going to get a lot of got hair-on-my-butt people.

Dr. Oz: They may not be as brave as you. So here's my thoughts. First of all, I'm a little concerned only because there have been some stories about impurities in some of the food supplies coming from China that you may be getting chemicals in the food, and I want to be sure that you're not getting testosterone or another hormone or something that acts like a hormone in the food you're eating. But assuming a more safe option, it might be because you're having less stress, which, by the way, will also change how DHT, this hormone that controls hair loss and growth, works. And if you're eating a lot of green tea now that you're in China versus England, that actually will— will change DHT and reduce it so you actually won't get hair loss. And then for the darkening of the hair, interestingly, soy products might influence that. Leafy green vegetables have something called paba in it. P-a-b-a. It's a precursor to folic acid, and those actually seem to allow hair to turn darker. It doesn't necessarily turn gray hair to dark hair but might make the hair you have darker. And those could all be potential reasons why you're seeing changes, even on your buttocks.

Terry: One thing, Dr. Oz, that we—I do eat that I've never eaten before here is sesame seeds. We have—in China we have a lot of like what they call rice flower which makes the sesame seed, which they put sesame seeds inside if you can see on the screen there.

Dr. Oz: Yeah.