Dr. Oz's Webcast Transcript

Dr. Oz: One last little tip before I forget omega-3 fats are hugely valuable in helping people cope with stress and change their thinking patterns. So think about that. Remember 80 percent of your brain is omega-3. I mentioned it earlier. It's one of the most important nutrients to get your brain sharp.

Laura: Okay, thank you.

Oprah: Thank you. Thank you, Laura. So now we have Ansley again from Franklin, Tennessee. We have two Franklin, Tennessees, in one night.

Dr. Oz: I love it.

Oprah: It's unbelievable. Hello, Franklin.

Ansley: Hi, Oprah. Hi, Dr. Oz. How are you all?

Oprah: Good. Good, Ansley. Go ahead.

Ansley: Good. I have a question about cancer. My parents have both been diagnosed with cancer in recent years. My dad actually died from multiple myeloma, which is a bone marrow cancer in 2005. He was 59 years old. And my mom, who just turned 60, recently was diagnosed with lung cancer. And she was a nonsmoker. And actually—(Inaudible.) Excuse me?

Oprah: Go ahead. Finish your question. Go ahead.

Ansley: I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. My mom, she has lung cancer and she's 60, and it's recently metastasized to her brain.

Oprah: Oh.

Ansley: And my parents are very healthy— or they were very healthy. They ate right. They're avid tennis players. They took the right vitamins that you and Dr. Roizen recommend. I'm just a little worried for my own health in the future and how can I stay cancer-free? Is there anything that they missed that I should add to my life now?

Dr. Oz: Well, you mention that your mom is not a smoker. The number two reason people get lung cancer is exposure to radon.

Ansley: Yes.

Dr. Oz: So I would definitely check the basement. And everyone in America, especially in cold-weather areas, the houses are very well insulated, so they trap radon which is a gas that comes from the soil.

Oprah: That's the number two reason?

Ansley: I actually had her house tested for radon when she was first diagnosed and it came over and it was clear. It was okay.

Dr. Oz: For people that don't know that—

Oprah: I never heard that before.

Dr. Oz: They're $10 kits. They're easy to use. Put them in your basement overnight and you get the readings, and you send it off and you find out—

Oprah: And that's if you have a certain kind of heat in your house?

Dr. Oz: No, no, no. It's not from the heat. It's from the soil. They build—the land releases radon. If you put a house on top of the land and insulate the house, the gas can't go anywhere. It gets stuck in your basement.

Oprah: Wow.

Dr. Oz: And then it permeates. You get sick houses. The houses that people get sick in, a lot of times it's because they've got high radon levels in them.

Oprah: And so what do you do to test your radon?

Dr. Oz: It's a little kit, it's about the size of my palm, you open it up. You put it in your basement. It collects the air for a couple hours, you pack it up, mail it off to the company. You can buy them in any hardware store.

Oprah: Okay and so let's say your house is sitting on a radon heap.

Dr. Oz: You can put vents in to get rid of the radon.

Oprah: Okay.

Dr. Oz: And sometimes you've got to move. But ideally obviously you find—you can put a pit in there to let the radon get back out again.

Oprah: Wow.

Dr. Oz: This is a big issue for a lot of Americans. I don't know if you've got toxins in the water where you live. It's hard to tell. But I always worry about that.

Ansley: Yes.

Dr. Oz: You can have the water checked. Most of the times communities can—will do that routinely anyway, but you can get more extensive testing. You also should check your own genome. Some people are born—listen, we're all dealt cards in life, and sometimes those cards mean we're going to get cancer younger than we would have gotten cancer. The good news about cancer today is most people can live with their cancer. We're a land of survivors. But if you want to know if you're at risk for a certain kind of cancer, there are genetic tests that can be done to screen for the most obvious ones. These are particularly true for breast cancers and the like, and you ought to—since you've got two cancers in young people, you ought to check. And we talk a little bit about medical history?

Ansley: Yes.

Dr. Oz: The most important thing I think for people to take weigh from this question is if you have two relatives, especially close blood relatives who are younger than 60, which you do, who have a problem that threatened their life, then you have a genetic predisposition to it probably, and that becomes your family history. You've got to tell people about it and have them search into what's going on in your genes that you might need to know about to reduce the chance of it happening to you.

Ansley: Okay.

Dr. Oz: All right. Good luck to you.

Ansley: Thank you so much for taking my call. 

Oprah: And how is your mom doing with it now metastasized to the brain? How is she doing?

Ansley: Well, she's actually doing very good. Thank goodness she is healthy because they're treating it pretty aggressively. They are—she's doing 20 rounds of whole brain radiation and then she's going to have a surgery in two weeks that's called stereotactic radiosurgery that will actually eliminate the tumors that are in her brain. So kind of scary but she's doing great and has a great attitude and a great support system, so—

Oprah: Thank you.

Ansley: Thank you, Oprah.

Oprah: Thank you. All the best to you and to her.

Ansley: Thank you.