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Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Watching Dr Oz 3/13/12: 6 Tips to Get Rid of Worry, Worry Cure Diet Plan, Kristen Johnston Spills Her Guts, Anti-Exhaustion Hot List, Protein Pack Your Day

The Dr. Oz Show
Airdate: March 13, 2012
The Worry Cure Diet Plan


  • Dr. Oz 6 tips to get rid of worry
  • Worry Cure Diet Plan
  • Kristen Johnston shares her downward spiral through addiction that almost took her life
  • Dr. Oz shares his anti-exhaustion hot list
  • Bonus Tips: Protein pack your day


Do you find yourself awake at 3am with all your worries racing through your head? Parents, mortgage payment, bills – it all stacks up to cause stress and anxiety. All that worry can turn toxic if it's held in. Dr. Oz says you can take control of your life with his Worry-Cure Show.

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Dr. Oz: 6 Tips to Get Worry-Free

The heart starts pounding, the body starts sweating - panic has set in. We are an anxiety society. Over 40 million people in this country are filled with worry. From unemployment to bills, taking care of ailing family members, jugging work, school and family. It all adds up to a bunch of stress.

Dr. Jennifer Hartstein, PsyD, Clinical Psychologist and author of Princess Recovery: A How-to Guide to Raising Strong, Empowered Girls Who Can Create Their Own Happily Ever Afters, specializing in anxiety disorders.

Dr. Hartstein explains that we are hard-wired to worry but when the the pressure of life in our society weighs on us it can become anxiety. When our concerns and fears limit our lives, becomes debilitating and stops us from participating from life it has crossed the line from worry to anxiety.

Healthy levels of fear can help save our life. Dr. Oz gave the example of a rope tossed at a person that looks like a snake. Instinct and reflexes will allow the body to react and jump out of harms way. If that rope was a snake, the fear response of moving would save your life.

When fear runs our lives, interferes with our life, it's no longer healthy. Our population is over medicated, turning to medication to soothe the anxiety instead of getting to the root of the problem to relive the worry.

Dr. Oz showed a tissue sample of the brain pointing out the amygdala, an almond-shaped portion of the brain that is responsible for our emotional reactions. This is the part of the brain that would cause the body to jump out of the way of a rope or a snake.

In the face of anxiety, Dr. Hartstein says we need to allow ourselves a time out, a time to allow ourselves to think about fears without feeling the need to solve everything. She has some more ideas on dealing with overwhelming worry.

Dr. Oz's Worry Cure #1: Worry Calendar
Dr. Hartstein says a Worry Calendar is a way to set out priorities to give structure and control to overcome the anxiety. Write out all your deadlines, due dates, important events on a calendar to organize all the important things.

Dr. Oz's Worry Cure #2: Breathing
How do you breath properly when those worries are speeding causing the breathing and heart rate to race out of control? Use a balloon, says Dr. Hartstein. Take a deep breath from the diaphragm, the belly, and blow slowly into the balloon to inflate it. In order to fill the balloon, you have to force control of the breathing which in turn slows down the heart rate.

[Click the link to read the Watching Dr Oz post from Dr. Hartstein's previous visit to The Dr. Oz Show.

Dr. Oz: The Guts of Worry

Dr. Holly Phillips, MD, internist and contributor to CBS, says the gut is considered the second brain, called the enteric nervous system. During stress, the body slows the upper digestive tract causing a stomach ache and stress speeds up the lower tract causing diarrhea.

Dr. Oz's Worry Cure #3: Lemon Balm
Dr. Phillips recommends taking lemon balm in capsules, 400mg twice daily, to support calming of the nervous system and to relieve stress.
Cost: about $4 at drug stores

[On the 2/14/12: Awkward Questions episode of The Dr. Oz Show the segment called Mood: The Diet Killer, recommended lemon balm in tea form to help reduce stress as a means to support a weight-loss program.]

Dr. Oz's Worry Cure #4: Iberogast
Iberogast is a blend of 9 herbs including chamomile and milk thistle, says Dr. Phillips. She says you only 20 drops for on the spot treatment when stomach is in knots. Dr. Oz says Iberogast is better than antacids to support the stomach during stress.

Dr. Oz: The Mind-Body Connection of Worry

To discuss the mind-body connection and how a holistic physician views stress and the body, Dr. Oz talked with Dr. Tasneen Bhatia, MD, CNS, with the Atlanta Center for Holistic and Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Bhatia says the holistic approach seeks to integrate mind, body, and spirit as well as look at body type to build a program to balance all body systems. She has two recommendations to help ease the stress of worry.

Dr. Oz's Worry Cure #5: Anti-Anxiety Elixir
Dr. Bhatia recommends drinking this anti-anxiety elixir up to three times a day to reduce the feelings of stress.

1 teaspoon of lemon juice to support healthy blood pressure
1 teaspoon of ginger, a warming, nurturing herb to calm the nervous system
½ teaspoon of honey can help support blood pressure

Mix in water and enjoy.

Dr. Oz's Worry Cure #5: Aromatherapy Inhaler
To help calm the brain quickly, Dr. Bhatia recommends using Escents Stress Relief aromatherapy inhaler. With a blend of herbs including bergamot, eucalyptus, and lavender, this inhaler can be used as many times as needed throughout the day.
Cost: about $7.00.

Top Foods To Improve Your Mood – The Worry-Free Diet

Chronic worry can be helped with food instead of pills, says Dr. Oz. He talks with Dr. Rovenia Brock, PhD, nutrition coach and good life guru, to learn the best foods to bust worry.


Dr. Ro says food is medicine and by combining the right amount of amino acids complex carbohydrates and vitamins can go a long way to help reduce stress. She has four categories of foods to eat from throughout the day.

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Diet Category #1: Complex Carbohydrates
Complex carbohydrates act as tranquilizers, keep the mood stable, and provide a good night sleep with their serotonin. Choose from whole wheat bread, dried oats, blue potatoes, dry beans, and barley.

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Diet Category #2: Tryptophan
Tryptophan is a precursor of serotonin – it helps the body to produce serotonin. Getting a bad wrap from making us sleepy on the fourth Thursday in November, turkey is the most popular tryptophan containing food but there are many others including shrimp, salmon, bananas, low-sodium soy sauce, pumpkin seeds, and kale.

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Diet Category #3: Vitamin C Foods
Studies show that Vitamin C may reduce stress hormone levels, says Dr. Ro, but oranges aren't your only source. She recommends red peppers, peaches, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, eggs, spinach, and kiwi. Collard greens can pack half your day's worth of Vitamin C in just 1 cup. If you're from the south, Dr. Ro says to get the fat out of the collard greens.

[Click here to read the Watching Dr Oz post from 2/2/12: Superfoods for Super Mood – Oranges for Stress.]

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Diet Category #4: Omega-3
Omega-3 fats support the stabilization of mood. Salmon and tuna are the celebrities of the omega-3 world but walnuts, flax, and edamame are all sources of the healthy fat. Instead of popping a pill, Dr. Ro says you can pop some edamame.

One Day of Worry Free Foods
Bring all the food categories together for a day of healthy meals to keep the stress away.

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Breakfast: Panic-Proof Parfait
Layer cantaloupe with cottage cheese, dried oats and pistachios to get the day started. Cantaloupe is rich in Vitamin C and cottage cheese contains tryptophan. Dried oats are from the complex carb category and pistachios give you those helpful omega-3 fats.

Dr. Ro also provided a tip for a late night snack food. She says if your up late worrying about life and need a snack, try cottage cheese as a go-to staple food.

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Lunch: Stress-Less Taco Salad
Make your own whole grain taco shell. Turn a muffin pan upside down, place the tortilla on the pan to create a bowl shape. Spray the tortilla with a bit of olive oil and bake it at 375° F for 8-10 minutes. Add what Dr. Ro calls the trifecta of all nutrients, red bell peppers, chili peppers for heat, and corn. Include spinach to increase the Vitamin C content. Top it all off with Greek yogurt.

Dr. Oz Worry-Free Dinner: Wind-Down Dinner
Choose an organic grass-fed steak, add mashed blue potatoes and steamed asparagus with almonds. Dr. Ro says if you're going to eat meat then get the most nutrient-dense meat in grass-fed cut. The blue potatoes provide stress-busting anthocyanins. The more color variety from foods means you get more nutrients.

Toxic Worry

Kristen Johnston, actress and author of Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster and survivor of addiction and a life-threatening illness shares what happened and how she got there. The Ex-es on TV Land.


One of the stars of 3rd Rock From the Sun, actress Kristen Johnston suffered a health crisis nearly killed her. On the outside she was a beautiful and wickedly funny actress, winner of 2 Emmy Awards, but on the inside her dark secret ate her alive, literally. In 2006 her addiction to alcohol and pain pills was brought to a near deadly end when her intestines exploded due to an ulcer and she almost died.

Now sober for over 5 years, Ms. Johnston says the 6 years prior to that were really bad. She started taking pain pills, just one a day and toward the end was taking 30-40a day just to feel normal. Not realizing that the pain pills were coated in aspirin, the pills were slowly eating away at her digestive tract.

What was the pain she was trying to kill? Ms. Johnston says, starting to tear up, that she didn't like herself. Today, she likes herself the way she is. She is proud of her sobriety, of herself, of her writing, she's teaching acting and loves her friendships. Her life has flourished since she gave up, what she calls, the prison of addiction.

Doing a play in London in 2006, Ms. Johnston felt pain in her abdomen thinking it was a pulled a muscle. It all happened while peeing, not glamorous just reality. The pain was so great she passed out for 4 hours calling it her Elvis nap. Waking up, she crawled to phone and called for help.

Dr. Oz wanted to show an animation of what happened to her – she agreed as long as she didn't have to touch anything. The pills and alcohol eat away at the natural lining of the stomach and intestines to a point where the acid ate a hole through the stomach; all the acid and food entered her body and the acid began digesting her body. Dr. Oz explained that anyone with ulcers could experience this too.

Three Warning Signs Of Ruptured Ulcer
  1. Weight-loss
  2. Sudden severe pain
  3. Black stool – blood goes through digestive system and comes out black

Ms. Johnston was told that she almost died twice on operating table. Dr. Oz it was a miracle that she lived through those 4 hours after her stomach blew. He said it took guts to get help get, to get sober and to tell about it.

Dr. Oz Stomach-Soothing One Pot Meal

Kristen Johnston's favorite recipe to soothe her stomach is a one-pot wonder. (It's her friend's recipe, actually, she says.) Traditional herbs rosemary and thyme go into the blended with olive oil to make a paste. Dr. Oz says these are the perfect herbs to the soothe the stomach – from digestion issues to cramps. Cut open the chicken to lay it out flat and stuff the paste between the skin and meat. Throw some little red potatoes around the bird on the pan and cook it. That simple!


Anti-Exhaustion Hot List

Dr. Oz four products that he says his own family uses to stave off exhaustion.

Dr. Oz Anti-Exhaustion Hot List #1: Nature's Bounty B12 Liquid Drops
Dr. Oz recommends taking Nature's Bounty B12 liquid drops. He says that 40% of the country doesn't have adequate levels of B12. [Vitamin B12 is a key nutrient for energy production.] Place the liquid under the tongue to allow the B12 to get into the blood stream faster than a pill would, explains Dr. Oz.
Cost: about $10.99.

Dr. Oz Anti-Exhaustion Hot List #2: Luna Energy Bar
Not all energy bars are created the same. Dr. Oz says the Luna Energy Bar folks [made by Cliff Bars] is meticulous about using ingredients that will energize the body. The bars provide the prefect combination of protein, fiber, and carbohydrates in a good balance but chose a bar with less than 15g of sugar.
Cost: about $1.39.

Dr. Oz Anti-Exhaustion Hot List #3: iPosture
iPosture calls itself a posture coach. This small, round disc attaches to your clothes and can beep to remind you to stand up straight. [It's like having your mother right there to tell you to stand-up straight!] When tired, our posture will drop. They way we hold our body will reflect our level of alertness. Holding good posture can support energy.
Cost: about $79.95.

Dr. Oz Anti-Exhaustion Hot List #4: Coffee
A latte is warm and comforting and can be beneficial for you says Dr. Oz. [YEAH COFFEE!] Caffeine with milk gives right combination for energy but do you always want to go out to the store for your coffee. Dr. Oz recommends to Mr. Coffee Cafe Latte Machine for your own in-home latte.
Cost: about $119.99.

Dr. Oz Bonus Tip! Best Way to Protein Pack Your Day

Protein is the best source of energy, says Dr. Oz. He's got 4 ways to pack more protein into your day.

Dr. Oz Protein Boost #1: Peanut Butter
Add 2 tablespoons of peanut butter to your oatmeal in the morning for 8g of protein. The peanut butter will provide an energy boost and keep you satiated until lunch.

Dr. Oz Protein Boost #2: Hemp Seeds
Add a handful of hemp seeds to a salad for a nutty flavored protein boost. One handful provides nearly a daily serving of protein.

[The CDC recommends getting 10-35% of calories from protein. Nutiva brand hemp seeds shows their product to contain 11g of protein per 3 tablespoon serving.]

Dr. Oz Protein Boost #3: Turkey and Cheese
For an afternoon energy boosting snack, Dr. Oz recommends to wrap a slice of turkey around cheese stick.

Dr. Oz Protein Boost #4: Almonds
Another snack recommendation is eating one handful of almonds and drink ½ of a Verve energy drink for a protein and vitamin boost.


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1 comment:

  1. Thank you for sharing our Verve Energy Drink information. Its a privilege to be included with so many great products on this episode. The official website for our 3 varieties of energy drinks is http://Verve.com.

    ReplyDelete