What's your health IQ?

The Dr. Oz Health Quiz
What's your health IQ?

The Oprah Winfrey Show
http://www.oprah.com/

1. What shape should your poop be?
A. Pancake-shaped B. S-shaped
C. Pebble-shaped D. I refuse to look.

2. How much fiber should you eat every day?
A. 10 grams C. 25 grams

B. 15 grams D. 55 grams

3. When have you had enough water?
A .When you have to go to the bathroom about every 30 minutes
B. When your urine is clear enough to read through
C. When your urine is odorless
D. When you feel slightly bloated all the time

4. What is the most dangerous fat on your body?
A. The fat in your thighs
B. The fat in your buttocks
C. The fat in your belly

5. Which of the following stores fat?
A. The sciatic nerve
B. The omentum
C. The duodenum

6. What are flavonoids?
A. They shrink hemorrhoids.
B. They're on your tongue.
C. They're near your adenoids.
D. They're in foods that contain antioxidants.

7. Which of the following is most important to determine if you're aging well?
A. Blood pressure
B. Cholesterol
C. Your weight
D. Your heart rate

8. Impotence could be a sign of what?
A. Liver problems
B. Heart disease
C. Iron deficiency
D. Underactive thymus

9. When do most people have heart attacks?
A. Monday morning
B. Tuesday afternoon
C. Saturday night
D. Sunday brunch

10. How often should you have sex, according to Dr. Oz?
A. Once a week
B. Twice a week
C. 10 times a month
D. 200 times a year or more

11. The best cure for a jellyfish sting is…?
A. Urine
B. Meat tenderizer
C. Vinegar
D. Fresh water

12. What is the best way to remove a tick?
A. Burn it.
B. Pluck it.
C. Suffocate it in petroleum jelly.
D. Apply nail polish remover, then ice

13. Why do some people attract mosquitoes more than others?
A. The scent of perfume, deodorant or lotion
B. Genetics
C. Your diet
D. All of the above
E. None of the

14. What is Dr. Oz holding?
A. A kidney stone
B. A gallstone
C. A ganglion cyst
D. A ball joint from the ankle



15. What causes "brain freeze"?
A. Dehydration
B. Immune system
C. Cold temperature and lactic acid
D. Dilation of arteries

16. What is the body part pictured here?
A. The liver
B. The appendix
C. The spleen
D. The kidney

Ready For The Answers

See How Many Correct Answers You Have

1. What shape should your poop be?
B. S-shaped
"It is supposed to be S-shaped, and for a very good reason," Dr. Oz says. "Poop, before it comes out, gets stored in the bottom of your rectum. And if it's unable to be stored there and achieve that shape, it means that your waste is not working well.
"Now we joke about this a lot, and that's all fun and good, but the reality is it's one of the best ways for us to audit how you're doing. If we don't know what's coming out of you and if you're not keeping track of it, we can't figure out [if] the machine's working the right way.“

2. How much fiber should you eat per day?
C. 25 grams
While people should be eating about 25 grams of fiber a day, Dr. Oz says the average American gets only 10 grams of fiber a day. And if you're not getting enough fiber, it will be difficult to get that S-shaped poop.
If you're looking to increase your fiber intake, don't do it all at one meal. Instead, try to get in meals throughout your day. "Obviously you can get them through the vegetables and fruits that you eat," Dr. Oz says as he points out several fiber-rich choices to Oprah. Other foods that are good sources of fiber include whole wheat pasta, whole wheat bread, steel cut oatmeal, peas and lentils.
"Recognize we don't have a main course item here, right? Our fiber comes from around the main course. … This meal right here has 25 grams in a day. So it's not magic."

3. When have you had enough water?
B. When your urine is clear enough to read through
The purpose of urine is to get rid of waste, like nitrogen, through urea, Dr. Oz says. Clear urine means that you've gotten enough fluid to wash it all out. "If you can't [read through it], that means the urine has been concentrated a bit," he says.
Water is important for more than just flushing waste out of your system. Dr Oz says it also allows chemical reactions in your body and helps blood reach capillaries to bring in more nutrients.
"Not having enough water gets the whole system to become sluggish, including your bowel," Dr. Oz says. "One of the best solutions I have found for constipation is water, just because you can mix it up a little bit and get it going.”

4. What is the most dangerous fat on your body?
C. The fat in your belly
"The thighs will cost you a few dates, but it's the fat in your belly that we worry about," Dr. Oz says.
When the fat is stored in your stomach, your body has easy access to it, Dr. Oz explains. The fat then creates an inflammatory process that irritates your arteries and puts you at risk for blocked arteries.

5. Which of the following stores fat?
B. The omentum
The omentum is the fat organ connected to your stomach that only has one purpose—catching and storing fat.
Once your omentum becomes large, can you shrink it? "Absolutely. That's the whole purpose of the omentum," Dr. Oz says. "We're born with omentums that we can store fat in, so we're supposed to be able to have it get bigger and smaller.”

6. What are flavonoids?
D. They're in foods that contain antioxidants.
Flavonoids are found in food—in things like teas and dark-colored berries. They're similar to vitamins and are important in maintaining health—studies have suggested an association between diets high in flavonoids and a reduced risk of cancer and heart disease. "They're what gives a lot of foods we have color," Dr. Oz says. "They're particularly effective at helping the body get rid of toxins that affect us.”

7. Which of the following is most important to determine if you're aging well?
A. Blood pressure
Dr. Oz says that while many people worry more about weight and cholesterol, your blood pressure is actually the most important measure of your health. One test that's important to both men and women is testing your blood pressure. High blood pressure—also known as hypertension—damages arteries and causes heart disease. Dr. Oz says optimal blood pressure is 115 over 75.
Dr. Oz compares cholesterol's role in repairing arteries to the way plaster is used to fix a hole in a wall. But what causes the holes in your arteries in the first place? "Blood pressure … drives the holes in our arteries that we then have to fix with cholesterol. … So if we don't have the holes, we don't have to worry about it.”
Dr. Oz says elevated blood pressure—the optimal number is 120 over 80—could take as much as 10 years off your life. If you have high blood pressure, Dr. Oz says it's important to follow all of your doctor's orders about salt intake, diet and drugs. "But of course, nothing's as good as exercise," he says. "That's really effective in getting blood pressure down.”

8. Impotence could be a sign of what?
B. Heart disease
Erections happen when arteries in the penis dilate and blood flows in. This dilation is caused by the release of a gas called nitric oxide. "If you don't have enough of that gas [to have an erection], it's not present in other places either—including your heart. It's one of the first signs that the heart is having hardened arteries.”
In fact, Dr. Oz says that drugs that treat erectile dysfunction stimulate chemicals that ultimately release nitric oxide. "That stated," Dr. Oz says, "the best solution is to keep your nitric oxide levels healthy. And the way for us to do that is to keep our arteries healthy.”

9. When do most people have heart attacks?
A. Monday morning
As the blood courses through an artery in your heart, plaque can build up on the walls. Sometimes, the plaque ruptures, leaving a raw surface exposed, Dr. Oz says. Platelets in the blood begin to form a scab over the rupture, which can lead to a blockage that causes a heart attack.
"That's why Monday mornings are worrisome to us, because it's a time of change, a time of stress," he says. "It's a time when that plaque is more likely to rupture and result in a heart attack. It doesn't take days to occur. It takes minutes, maybe hours to occur.”
Dr. Oz says that it's important to spot the plaque early because closed arteries lead to heart attacks. Unlike the delicate organs under the first cloth, a traumatized heart looks like it's led a hard life. The heart enlarges to compensate for the heart attack, and by this point, it's too late to reverse the negative effects of an unhealthy lifestyle, Dr. Oz says.

10. How often should you have sex, according to Dr. Oz?
D. 200 times a year or more
"If you have more than 200 orgasms a year, you can reduce your physiologic age by six years," Dr. Oz says. He bases the number on a study done at Duke University that surveyed people on the amount and quality of sex they had. "They looked at what happened to folks that are having a lot of intercourse over time, and the fact is, it correlated.“
Among the benefits of having sex often, Dr. Oz says, is that it can prove that your body is functioning as it is supposed to. "But in addition, having sex with someone that you care for deeply is one of the ways we achieve that Zen experience that we all crave as human beings," he says. "It's really a spiritual event for folks when they're with someone they love and they can consummate it with sexual activity … seems to offer some survival benefit.”

11. The best cure for a jellyfish sting is…?
C. Vinegar
Dr. Oz says the best thing to do for a jellyfish sting is to wash off the affected area and then apply vinegar. "When you're stung by a jellyfish, it actually puts a little venom in you, so the best thing is to wash it off with saltwater, not fresh water, because that makes the sting worse," Dr. Oz says.
If you don't have any vinegar handy, Dr. Oz says urine can help the sting site, but it is not quite as acidic as vinegar and therefore not as helpful. "[Acidity] actually deactivates the toxin. And then if you need to, you can actually shave the site and those little specks [left by the sting] will come out, and you can pull them out if you need to.”

12. What is the best way to remove a tick?
B. Pluck it.
Dr. Oz says ticks are one of the leading carriers of diseases in the United States, causing tens of thousands of people to contract Lyme disease each year. The safest way to remove a tick from your body without exposing yourself to diseases, Dr. Oz says, is simply to pull it out.
"It's actually the most common reason that we get bad problems resulting from insect bites," he says. "The tick has in itself viruses and other contaminants that are quite detrimental to our well-being. So if you try to burn it … or put gasoline on it, it actually irritates the tick. So what does the tick do? It regurgitates the fluid back into you.“
To avoid the tick releasing its germs into your body, Dr. Oz says to remove it without bothering it. "Get your tweezers, flip the tick upside down, grab the mouth of it and pull hard," he says. "Don't twist it. Just pull it, because the barbs go straight in.“
If the tick's head remains in your skin after you remove its body, Dr. Oz says not to worry—the saliva and viruses are contained in the tick's body. "If you want to get [the head] out like a splinter, then get it out," he says. "But I'll give advice for moms out there—if your kid has a little bit of the head left in, the body will push it out by itself. I wouldn't strap the kid down and go after the head of it. That's not where the infection is. The infection was the body that's already gone.”

13. Why do some people attract mosquitoes more than others?
D. All of the above
"Genetics is probably the most important driver of whether a bug likes you or not," Dr. Oz says. "But there's no question that the scent of perfume or deodorant [is also a factor].“
One feature that might actually repel mosquitoes—which also can carry diseases such as malaria—is body hair, Dr. Oz says. "Mosquitoes don't like the hair," he says. "Plus, when the mosquito lands, I can feel it before you can [because of the hair on my arms].“

14. What is Dr. Oz holding?
B. A gallstone
Dr. Oz says gallstones can come in a variety of different colors and shapes, depending on what substances they contain, such as red blood cells or cholesterol. "They're made from different materials, because your gallbladder cleans a lot of material out," he says. While some are round, Dr. Oz says others form in the shape of dice if they are pushed together.
While he says larger gallstones are not dangerous, the smaller ones can cause problems. "They actually travel into the main duct that drains your liver, and they can block off the pancreas and the liver. That's when you turn yellow and get pancreatitis," he says. "So these things, although they're beautiful, can be dangerous.“

15. What causes "brain freeze"?
D. Dilation of arteries
If you are among the 30 percent of people who get headaches when they eat ice cream too fast, Dr. Oz says the dilation of your arteries is to blame. "When you eat ice cream, it actually stimulates the back of your mouth because it's cold and the arteries spasm," he says. "But after they close down, they relax, and that lets too much blood go to your brain, and you get the headache.“
How do you get rid of the painful ache? Dr. Oz says you should hold your tongue at the top of your mouth to warm it up between bites of ice cream.

16. What is the body part pictured here?
C. The spleen
Located on the left side of your abdomen, Dr. Oz says the spleen helps the immune system function better. "If you can feel your spleen, that means you probably have an infection," he says. "Mononucleosis does that, and illnesses that draw on your immune system.“
According to Dr. Oz, people often damage their spleens when they have car crashes or sports injuries. "It's so rich in blood. It's an extra reservoir of blood for us," he says. "So when we fracture it, it starts to really bleed a lot, and that's one of the reasons we have to operate on folks."