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realisticphish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-31-09 12:15 PM
Original message
Newsweek tackles Oprah
http://www.newsweek.com/id/200025/output/print

This is a great article about all the woo that Oprah peddles. I'm completely shocked that a major news outlet tackled the empire that is Oprah's media entity.

Tip of the hat to Pharyngula
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salvorhardin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-31-09 02:32 PM
Response to Original message
1. I was just reading that Newsweek article!
Well, now we know, I think, whether or not Oprah really believes the crap she's peddling. She does! Scarily so.
Oprah said that although she has never had a hot flash, after reading Somers she decided to go on bioidenticals herself. "After one day on bioidentical estrogen, I felt the veil lift," she wrote in O, The Oprah Magazine. "After three days, the sky was bluer, my brain was no longer fuzzy, my memory was sharper. I was literally singing and had a skip in my step." On the show, Oprah had her own word of warning for the medical establishment: "We have the right to demand a better quality of life for ourselves," she said. "And that's what doctors have got to learn to start respecting."
http://www.newsweek.com/id/200025/output/print


Holy crap! And this is a better quality of life?

In January, Oprah Winfrey invited Suzanne Somers on her show to share her unusual secrets to staying young. Each morning, the 62-year-old actress and self-help author rubs a potent estrogen cream into the skin on her arm. She smears progesterone on her other arm two weeks a month. And once a day, she uses a syringe to inject estrogen directly into her vagina. The idea is to use these unregulated "bio-identical" hormones to restore her levels back to what they were when she was in her 30s, thus fooling her body into thinking she's a younger woman. According to Somers, the hormones, which are synthesized from plants instead of the usual mare's urine (disgusting but true), are all natural and, unlike conventional hormones, virtually risk-free (not even close to true, but we'll get to that in a minute).

Next come the pills. She swallows 60 vitamins and other preparations every day. "I take about 40 supplements in the morning," she told Oprah, "and then, before I go to bed, I try to remember … to start taking the last 20." She didn't go into it on the show, but in her books she says that she also starts each day by giving herself injections of human growth hormone, vitamin B12 and vitamin B complex. In addition, she wears "nanotechnology patches" to help her sleep, lose weight and promote "overall detoxification." If she drinks wine, she goes to her doctor to rejuvenate her liver with an intravenous drip of vitamin C. If she's exposed to cigarette smoke, she has her blood chemically cleaned with chelation therapy. In the time that's left over, she eats right and exercises, and relieves stress by standing on her head. Somers makes astounding claims about the ability of hormones to treat almost anything that ails the female body. She believes they block disease and will double her life span. "I know I look like some kind of freak and fanatic," she said. "But I want to be there until I'm 110, and I'm going to do what I have to do to get there."


Hey, we all want to live to be 110 but not only is that not going to get you there, but injecting hormones, chelation and unnecessary IV drips (even it is only Vitamin C) might actually make sure you don't make it pass 60 (Summers was born in 1946).
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nickgutierrez Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-31-09 09:11 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Sounds like she's on the Ray Kurzweil plan.
Either that, or she's going to play linebacker for the Bears. Seriously, daily injections of human growth hormone?
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salvorhardin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-31-09 09:19 PM
Response to Reply #2
3. That's what I thought too
But Summers goes so far beyond Kurzweil that she makes Ray look like a dilettante.
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realisticphish Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sun May-31-09 10:15 PM
Response to Reply #1
4. she's always been very "mystical"
I think the woo has ramped up lately, though. Or maybe I never noticed until "The Secret" was being spread like a plague
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edhopper Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-02-09 09:28 AM
Response to Reply #1
6. I've always disliked her.
Not personally, but what she does on her show. This article really focused what where my general feelings.
I come away thinking she is just a hypocritical entertainer, trying to put on a "good show". Or she believes this crap, which makes her a woo-kook. ("woo-kook" is copyright, me :sarcasm: :7 )
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semillama Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-02-09 11:08 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. Woo-kook a choo!
That's the sound a woo makes when they get a cold after taking Airbourne and mega doses of Vitamin C and Echinacea.
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mr blur Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-01-09 06:53 AM
Response to Original message
5. All the fault of Big Pharma, I notice.
those damned doctors will say anything for money. GET THE TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS!1!
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onager Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Jun-04-09 09:52 PM
Response to Original message
8. Follow-up: "Is Oprah Selling Snake Oil?"
:rofl:

Maybe Big O. could invite on Sherri Shepherd from "The View"--to handle the snakes before they extract the oil.

From Jezebel.com, billed as a site offering "celebrity, fashion, sex for women." It offers a lot more than that, like intelligent conversation on a wide variety of topics. e.g., check out the threads on the killing of Dr. Tiller.

I just lurk there, since I'm a geezer with a Y chromosome:

http://jezebel.com/5278888/is-oprah-selling-snake-oil
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TZ Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jun-05-09 01:02 PM
Response to Original message
9. Interesting article
However I am VERY distressed that Jenny McCarthy is getting her own show. Great. I can't wait for all the diseases that come back and bite us in the ass because of her idiocy.x(
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