Dr. Oz on Health and Hygiene

After his groundbreaking revelation about S-shaped poop, Dr. Oz inspired Americans to look in their toilets. Now, he's back to help viewers figure out what's normal when it comes to health and hygiene.
 
Poll: Are your health and hygiene habits normal?

Dr. Oz goes deep with his first question: How often do people pick their noses? The results might shock you. "It's five times an hour," he says. "I'm talking about just going to your nose, ... not trying to touch your brain."

Dr. Oz says the issue is less about touching your nose and more about keeping your hands clean. "If someone sneezed on [this chair] two hours ago, maybe even six hours ago, the viruses on there could still be alive," he says. "So if I were to touch that chair and then go to my nose, my nose is a petri dish. [It has] nice, moist mucus membranes. And then we begin to colonize [viruses]." 

So whether you pick, scratch or just brush, Dr. Oz urges everyone to keep their hands clean. "At the end of the day, it's just a matter of being smart about the reality of what we unconsciously do to groom ourselves."

Watch Dr. Oz demonstrate the triangle of death 

Dr. Oz asks the audience if they look inside the tissue after they blow their nose. Seventy-four percent of audience members say they can't help sneaking a peek. "They're smart," Dr. Oz says. "They're auditing what's going on in their body." 

Dr. Oz says your snot can indicate whether you're getting sick. "If it's green, maybe you should call someone like a doctor."

Sarah admits to a chronic picking problem—she can't keep her hands off pimples. "I am obsessed with picking zits or blemishes on myself or my husband or my children," she says. "I can't let it go."

Dr. Oz says this is extremely common. "One in five women chronically will pick [pimples]," he says. "It's part of that natural deep desire to groom each other."

Still, there's a right way and a wrong way to pop a zit. "Never squeeze a pimple," he says. "You're destroying all the tissue around [it]."

Watch Dr. Oz demonstrate the right way to zap a zit

Dr. Oz's next revelation could turn frowns everywhere upside down. "Forty-three percent of women say they don't brush their teeth before they go to bed at night," he says.

Dr. Oz says this statistic is concerning because nighttime is prime breeding time for bacteria. "Because your mouth dries out, they start to invade into the teeth," he says. "I'm not worried about cavities. I'm worried about gingivitis, which is the number one cause of tooth loss."

Gingivitis can lead to more serious health problems. "It also, unfortunately, is a major driver of heart attacks, of strokes, because your body is creating a civil war in your mouth because you didn't go inside with the scrubbing police and clean it out," he says. "If you floss your teeth and it bleeds three times in a row, you probably have gingivitis."

Dr. Oz says you should brush your teeth for two minutes both in the morning and at night. "Make a game out of it. Put your favorite tune on. Dance around," he says. "Make it happen."

The next time something silent but deadly assaults your nose, Dr. Oz says you shouldn't rush to blame the man in the room. On average, Dr. Oz says men and women both pass gas about 14 times a day. 

While you can't control how many times you pass gas, Dr. Oz says you can control how it smells. "Only about 5 percent of what you pass really has an odor if you're eating normal foods," he says. “If you're going to have 30 grams of fiber—which you ought to—[if] you try to do it all at once, you're going to have a lot of gas and a lot of bloating, but it won't smell.”

While some meats may lead to strong-smelling gas, Dr. Oz says the worst offenders are synthetic and packaged food. "They have chemicals in them,” he says. “The bacteria that digest the food? The waste product of the bacteria is gas. And that's what you're passing out. And it doesn't smell so hot.”

It's the question that is bound to start a debate within your closest circle of friends—Do you sleep with underwear on or off?

Dr. Oz says it's time to go au naturel. "You don't want it to be so moist down there. Let it dry out a little bit," he says. "Secondly, the underpants can abrade on your skin a little bit, which can cause pimples, and you don't want that."

If you use protective paper covers in public bathrooms, Dr. Oz says you may actually be covering up the cleanest part of the restroom. "The toilet seat is actually one of the cleaner places," he says. "Someone's job is to go into the toilet and clean the toilet seat."

If you do find yourself in a treacherous bathroom situation, Dr. Oz says his personal routine is foolproof. He says you should be especially careful when flushing the toilet. "There's a plume of fecal material that comes out of the water and gets on your toothbrushes and everything else. So the first thing you do is close the lid. And if you're in a public place, use your feet, kick shot, and flush the thing," he says. "Then you walk out. Wash your hands, obviously, and then you use that same towel that you dried your hands with to open the door as you walk out of a public bathroom."

Still, Dr. Oz says the biggest germ offenders are found outside of the bathroom. "I'll tell you what you shouldn't touch if you're working in an office: the public phones," he says. "In the hospital, never touch the remote control. You probably shouldn't touch it at home either without cleaning it, because who's cleaning the remote control?"

Dr. Phil's straight talk on relationships

Take these polls to find out if you're normal:
Is your love life on track?
Do you have healthy hygiene habits?
Are your everyday actions out of the norm?