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Dr. Oz Reveals He Had a Medical Scare at Age 50 and Praises a Simple Procedure For Saving His Life
In honor of National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, Dr. Oz is urging people to not put off the unpleasant task of getting a colonoscopy. In fact, the 58-year-old medical practitioner credits the procedure for actually saving his life because his doctor found something that could of done a lot of harm to his body if gone untreated.
“Let me speak from my own experience,” Dr. Oz recalled on the Today show. “I’m a pretty healthy guy. My family has no history of colon disease. At age 50 I went in for my [first] colonoscopy not because I wanted to [and] not because my doctor wanted me to. I was getting browbeaten by a lot of people and I finally got it done and I found a pre-cancerous polyp.”
Once the TV personality’s doctor was able to remove the substance from his body, Dr. Oz recalled it being a very “remarkable” experience because he wasn’t expecting his doctor to find anything. “I was completely stunned,” he said.
Dr. Oz reassured viewers that getting a colonoscopy isn’t as bad as it seems and, even though many people believe you’re supposed to start getting one at age 50, you’re actually supposed to have your first one at age 45.
March is Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, and more than 100,000 Americans will be diagnosed this year – and a growing number of those cases will be younger patients.@DrOz answers our questions and shares his personal experience that saved his life. pic.twitter.com/DHQ5iUzwwq
— TODAY (@TODAYshow) March 13, 2019
But if you’re younger than 45, Dr. Oz advises that the best thing to do is to just try and identify any symptoms that are related to colon cancer, like a change in your stool or abdominal discomfort. “For young people, the real takeaway has to be identifying your symptoms,” he said. “People just aren’t identifying it early on. Stage IV colon cancer is a big deal! But if you catch it by stage I or II, the success rates are gargantuan, they’re huge to over 90 percent!”
“It is the best cancer screening tool of them all because you can not only find the problem, [but] you can cure the problem,” Dr. Oz explained, adding that it is such a simple procedure. “With a colonoscopy, you’re finished! Guy goes in there, a G.I. specialist, finds a polyp, clips the polyp and removes it.”
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