PRINCETON: Dr. Oz offers mental, physical tips at university

By Dana Bernstein, Special to the Packet
   Surgeon, Emmy award-winning talk show host and author Dr. Oz spoke about mental and physical health to a packed lecture hall at Princeton University on Thursday, March 8, in conjunction with the university’s Mental Health Week.
   ”When you talk to a large audience all at once, you learn a lot about how people process information, how people deal with the fears of their life and how sometimes people don’t show up in their life. A lot of that comes back to how their mental health is functioning,” he explained to more than 300 students, faculty and community members. His speech was also simulcast in five nearby classrooms.
   He emphasized four nuggets of wisdom that he has learned from Oprah: listen before fixing problems; feelings change minds; make it easy to do the right thing; and show up in your life.
   ”If I tell you to stop smoking, and you’re a smoker, you probably already know that, and second, if I tell you it’s bad for you, you already know that, so I’m wasting your time and my time,” Oz said. “Most importantly, I’m making you feel worse about yourself. That’s the primary reason people over 30 smoke — because they don’t feel good about themselves.”
   Oz explained that exercise is the best coping mechanism for stress and added that knowing the proper way to take a deep breath is crucial. In an interactive demonstration, Oz showed how one should take a deep breath.
   ”When you exhale, the diaphragm goes up, and the belly goes in. When you inhale, the belly has to go out to let the muscle come down and so the lung can get sucked down. It’s the opposite of what most of you did,” he said.
   Oz said he has a unique trick for coping with stress.
   ”A lot of us store our tension in our hips and jaws. When I drive . . . [and] in the studio before I start, or during a tense moment, I’ll take a cork and put it in my mouth. Like the Italians do. It stretches out the masseter muscle,” he said. “The other thing is when you put the cork in your mouth when you drive, people won’t bother you.”
   Further, stress leads to overeating because of the way our bodies are wired, he said.
   ”A thousand years ago, there was only one primary chronic stress cause: It was famine,” he said. “We secrete hormones that are reflective of what happens in famines.”
   He added that 95 percent of diabetes cases in the U.S. are caused by obesity and estimated that 80 percent of these diabetics would convalesce significantly if they were able to lose the extra weight. He said that the entire obesity epidemic is 100 excess calories every day.
   ”It doesn’t depend on willpower. Conventional diets try to go there; they fail 98.5 percent of the time because biology will always beat willpower,” Oz said. “There was never a time in humanity’s history when we wanted to lose weight. So your body’s not going to all of a sudden recognize that you’re trying to do it on purpose.”
   His advice?
   ”Weight doesn’t matter as much as your waist size does. I’m going to give you one formula. This works for children, adolescents, young adults, old adults. Your waist size needs to be less than half of your height.”
   Oz delved into the topic of weight further by discussing the difference between endurance and fitness.
   ”Your endurance at age 17 is the same as at age 65. I’m not talking about your peak fitness — your ability to jump, run, lift. That all peaks at age 27, roughly,” he said. “Our endurance actually is supposed to be stable for the rest of our lives. Our ancestors never outran the antelope; our ancestors out-endured the antelope.”
   The most important lesson he learned from his patients revolves around connections with others.
   ”Your heart needs a reason to keep beating. I think what we lack the most today in America, and what we — and only we — can rebuild is connection,” he said. “Without that connection, you don’t have trust or integrity. This is what we have to recreate at many levels.”