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Could Dr. Öz’s cancer save millions of others?
by
ORHAN KEMAL
CENGİZ
by
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
As you can guess, I am quite sensitive about cancer and trying to protect myself from it. I try to follow “the gurus” of health and their advice. One of these gurus is of course Dr. Mehmet Öz.
Öz means “essence” in Turkish. Mehmet is one of most common names in Turkey, which is also used to refer to “private soldier” in a sympathetic way -- we say “Mehmetçik.” Since there is no “Ö” in English he is called Dr. Oz in the US, and of course the associations of these words are quite different. He may be one of the best-known Turkish figures in the world, and I think he is one the best-known people in the US. He is a gifted heart surgeon but he has also become an advocate for healthy living.
Every time I go to New York or Washington I see his pictures on buses and on the walls of bookstores and pharmacies. I read his books and watch his TV show. His public performances started with his frequent appearances on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “Larry King Live,” and he became so popular that he ended up hosting his own program, “The Dr. Oz Show.”
Dr. Oz is known as a person who follows his own advice. In keeping with his advice for everyone else, he had a routine colonoscopy after his 50th birthday. He would probably never have imagined that he might have something to worry about. We all now know his test results. He has colon cancer.
When I first read this news I felt quite strange. First I had a flashback. Once I went to a dietician and as soon as I saw her, I fled out of her office. It was like a cosmic joke; she was extremely obese. In recalling this memory, I said to myself that the Dr. Oz situation is even worse. The dietician may have been obese, but her advice could still work. In Oz’s case, if there is something wrong in his advice, there is no going back. Actually, I seriously pondered this possibility. Oz is one of those doctors who bravely advise everyone to take supplementary pills. While thinking about this, I took a glance at my kitchen counter full of bottles of dietary supplements: vitamin C, co-enzyme Q10, vitamin E, vitamin D, chromium picolinate, green tea, açai, B-complex, glucosamine chondroitin MSM, hawthorne berry, milk thistle, shark liver oil and so on and so forth.
Oz and others, with their dynamic, full-of-energy appearances, with their auras that imply that they have discovered the secret of life, with their endless advice, constantly create a kind of feeling of guilt in each of us. They do a great deal to stay healthy, and we lazy creatures never do enough to catch up to those “standards.” If we add such supplements we will have a healthy circulation system; if we take this, our mental abilities will be boosted, with this one our immune system will work like a clock!
I am now planning to get rid of all these vitamins and supplements from my kitchen. Because I am very suspicious that they may be the real cause of the cancer that Mr. Oz is now struggling with. There is no history of cancer in his family, he is very active and he has every reason to be healthy.
Let’s lend an ear to the interview Dr. Oz gave to People magazine recently where he said: “The only thing holding me back from a terrible outcome is the dumb luck that I checked myself out for the show. I would have put this off, like a lot of people. But I bet this saved my life … This was a shakeup for me … I have done everything right. I don’t have any family history, and yet I’m high risk now … There’s a lot of tension … It’s frustrating. Why did this happen to me? It forces you to question the assumptions you make about life.”
A new and fresh start awaits Dr. Oz. I hope that his situation will urge everyone of us to revise everything we know about our health and diet. In this sense, Dr. Oz’s cancer may save millions of others from suffering from this illness. What did Dr. Oz do wrong? I am now going to my kitchen and throwing out all these medicines. I wish him a quick recovery. I hope he will question his health condition honestly and openly and in this way he will help millions of others. When he is recovering, with a newfound enlightenment, he can also enlighten millions of others.
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