How much faith do you have in recommendations made by TV doctors, such as Dr. Oz? [Details]?

0.

They’re quacks and they should be ashamed.

none.

None. A real doctor would be practicing medicine.

Personally I think like most TV personalities they are out to make a quick buck!

I don’t pay much attention to the advice of TV doctors, I prefer to trust my personal physician.

ZEEEEROOOO

I certainly wouldn’t just take their word for it. Is do other research in anything that sounded interesting to me.

A person would have to be living in a bubble with their eyes closed and fingers in their ears to still take “Dr. Oz” seriously. He’s been condemned by your Congress and Senate, consumer advocates and other doctors. What a quack.

Zero till I can find other credible web sites that would agree. I think Web MD. is a good source. I stopped watching his show years ago when it started to seem like an hour infomercial pitch.

I’m going to give a few specific instances of valuable medical info which I have learned from TV medical shows.

I don’t necessarily remember in each specific instance whether I saw it on Dr. Oz or on The Doctors but since I always check things out with other reputable sources (such as Mayo Clinic and similar) I don’t think it makes all that much difference.

1.) There was a demonstration of a significantly less invasive an alternative to sinus surgery known as Balloon Sinuplasty which can be done with local numbing rather than general anesthesia. The worst side effect is that it may not work the first time but can be repeated.

This is opposed to only a 30% success rate for standard sinus surgery which can be EXTREMELY PAINFUL and many times can worsen the situation and leave scar tissue.

So which alternative do you think I’m likely to try?

Had I not learned about it on TV, I would have been totally unaware that it existed since it’s a fairly new technique.
My own Dr. never mentioned a word about it and basically just yelled at me for continuing to take a Decongestant without offering any other solution.

2.) Spinal Stenosis is a seriously debilitating and painful condition to which my attention had recently called from a good friend of mine.

For years, the standard solution has been a multi-hour spinal surgey with a long long scar down the spine and an estimated year long recovery time.

Recently there has been a new procedure with significant success rates using keyhole surgery combined with specialized tools which could be don’t in a day procedure with many people pain free and functional within 24–48 hours.

The acronym for this procedure is M. I. L. D. This stands for Minimally Invasive Lumbar Decompression and that’s exactly what it is.

Again, I would have been totally unaware of its existence had I not seen it on TV.

There was even a fairly recent Q on Fluther several months ago about a person concerned for her teen family member facing a daunting back surged at such a young age and wondered if that was the only alternative.

I explained about the MILD procedure with the caution that I have no idea whether it was appropriate for her situation or not. But to do some research on it and check it out with medical Drs.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if a far less invasive procedure could spare a long painful recovery from radical surgery?

Put it this way: since this is so new, there aren’t a whole lot of Drs. who either know about it or have experience doing it. But, I would FAR RATHER know that it exists and MIGHT be appropriate rather than be totally ignorant of its existence.

If you don’t feel likewise, fine. No one is forcing you to watch.

As for me, I’d much rather know about something even tho I may never need it rather than need it and be totally unaware of its existence.

Those are only two examples from the many different things I’ve learned from both Dr. Oz and The Doctors. Obviously, I’ve also done more research on each of those procedures as well as numerous others.

I don’t just unquestioningly believe everything I hear. Basically, the things featured on these TV shows many times act as pointers to draw my attention to find out more about somethings which I previously didn’t even know existed.

And calling TV doctors quacks is just petty name calling. All of the physicians on The Doctors as well as Oz are board certified in their specialty. Isn’t this what we are always exhorted to check for in real life Doctors. Obviously it should apply to TV doctors as well.

I seriously doubt that there are a whole bunch of quacks who bother to get board certified.

Plus, each of The Doctors on that program (in addition to Oz) maintain a regular medical practice. Oz still regularly schedules surgeries (not 5–7 days per week as previous but usually one or more days)

Do I accept everything they say unquestioningly? Of course not. And I frequently fast forward through large parts of both program.

But compared to years past when there weren’t any medical programs other than soap operas, I’m glad for the increased exposure of cutting edge medical procedures that can be found nowadays.

You’re perfectly free to ignore it all if you choose, but I’ve used it as a guide for what to do more research about and glad I did. To each his own.

If you are going to use the word quack, you might as well use it for a lot of doctors you see in an exam room. Dr. Oz is a well respected cardiac surgeon. I do get frustrated with many doctors, all too often they tell you something partially wrong or wrong altogether. At least he says that what a lot of doctors learn in med school, 25 years later the science proves wrong, or there is a better understanding and treatment from whence they studied originally.

The positives about Dr. Oz’s show are he encourages weight loss, which was sorely needed in America. He reaches people who thought being overweight was a normal weight. He encourages people to question their doctor, get a second opinion, and listen to their body. I rarely watch his show, because it is honestly hard for me to watch, i find it usually rather boring, I look at him and I think he is a little ick, and a lot of the time the information is too elementary for me, but I have seen episodes where I did learn something, or he piqued my interest on a medical topic.

One time he did a show doing unscientific mini studies on different thing. One was a small group of people ate only veggies and fruits for a week. The average drop in cholesterol when tested was 25% in one week. I think that easily is near the case even in a huge sample of people done in the scientific method. Maybe not 25%, but in my opinion a very sugnificant number. Doctors in general I believe don’t know the cholesterol number can drop that fast with a vegan diet.

He also did a mini study about hydration to question the myth people have about needing a ton of water to stay hydrated. Water is good, don’t get me wrong, but a ton of Americans think they need gallons of water to stay hydrated, and they pee constantly, and its overload.

He is a little too natural remedy, pop an herbal supplement, for me; and, I don’t like his stupid demonstrations, but he probably has helped way more people than he has hurt.

It is as they say:
Those who can, do.
Those who can not, teach.
And those who can not teach, run their mouth on daytime television.

@ragingloli Dr. Oz still sees patients and performs surgery. I can’t believe I’m defending him, because I don’t like him much, but I do care that we are as accurate as possible.

I feel the same as you and take a lot of what he says with a huge grain of salt.

I have his program and The Doctors set to automatically record each day but I do end up fast forwarding through many portions of it.

And I was truly puzzled when I found one program where he featured Theresa Capufo, The Long Island Psychic. I just shook my head and hit the delete button on that one. Good grief.

That being said, however, I have learned quite a lot from watching medical shows and don’t plan to stop just because some people who’ve never bothered themselves to watch a single show just automatically chime in with the hypercritical chorus.

I certainly don’t automatically accept everything he says and find myself disagreeing with him frequently. But, i’d still prefer to have the info even if I discard half of it.

^^A few weeks ago I caught a Dr. Oz show and was incredible annoyed a woman had a vitamin D level of 13 and he only recommended 1,000 IU’s a day! That is ridiculous, but at least he did test her for it, and found she was hypothyroid and pre-diabetic. I was curious to know if she had actually been to doctors and they missed all of that? Or, if she had avoided doctors?

Today I saw a show about women who basically saved their own lives because of his show. One wound up having ovarian cancer (usually a death sentence) another couple of women a heart attack (one in her early 30’s) and another who finally did a colonoscopy and had something like 14 polyps.

They showed the surgery of the older woman (not very old though) and the fat around her heart, a “clip” that slipped during surgery that if it happened once she was seen up she would probably have died, and also that it took a long time for her heart to start beating again on it’s own.

Just to add, I wrote the show about the vitamin D it annoyed me so much. Does he ever test his patients afterwards? He did say she likely would need more. But, everything I know about she will need more like 8,000 IU’s a day. My guess is he won’t test for a couple months again, so she won’t get to normal levels probably for over 6 months the way he is treating her, if ever. That drives me crazy.

I think a lot of doctors prescribe and then don’t follow up fast enough. One main gripe I have along with that is requiring the patient to make a doctor’s appointment for the blood test. They should be able to get the tests and then have their appointment a week later when the results come in. Once they are stablized then still some blood tests, but they don’t need to see the doctor every time, unless something comes up. The greed makes patients noncompliant.

@JLeslie It seems like Docs are just now testing for D and many are being conservative with the dosage. If my D was 13 I’d be taking like 10,000IU daily.

If they are retesting their patients they quickly figure out the dosages that are necessary. I don’t think they retest D nor other things quickly enough or consistently enough. Dr. Oz has been talking about vitamin D for several years. How can he still be recommending 1,000 IU’s. My guess is he rarely does follow up with patients, because he is a surgeon. Probably they follow up with their GP.