CHECK YOURSELF BEFORE YOU WRECK YOURSELF

30 Rock’s Grizzwald “Grizz” Chapman is on the waiting list for a kidney transplant, but the 6-foot-11, 378-pound actor is too overweight to be considered a viable candidate for the procedure. Doctors told him he must lose over 75 pounds before he can be eligible, so Grizz has turned to Dr. Oz for help in losing the weight and staying as healthy as possible until a kidney becomes available. The actor will tell his story on today’s episode of “The Dr. Oz Show.”

“A lot of this stuff is new to me. Opening up is something I have to learn how to do if I’m going to be in this business,” Grizz, 35, said following the taping. “At first I didn’t want to do it, but I felt that it would be a good situation for me to enlighten people to what’s going on.” Grizz says he is suffering from severe hypertension that has him on a dialysis machine three times a week. In today’s episode, Chapman reveals that he ignored his high blood pressure for 10 years, even refusing to take medication for his condition. Now, according to Oz’s “Truth Tube,” Chapman has only 5% function of his kidneys.

“It’s a painful problem for physicians to see because it’s preventable,” Oz said. “There are more than 25,000 cases of kidney failure in America each year because of high blood pressure, and the African-American community is especially at risk. “I learned a lot today about what’s going on in the minds of folks living with high blood pressure and not managing it,” he said.
Doctors have told Grizz that the kidney transplant wait is at least five years. Oz has assembled a team of medical experts to help Grizz take the right steps to stay healthy until a kidney becomes available for him. Chapman is trying to stay positive, and says that just talking with Oz “makes you feel like you’re healed already.”

I wanted to do this story as a wake-up call to all of us. We all need to do our part in checking our health status and doing something about. I to relate to Grizz, because I was in deep denial for a long time about my own health. I am now taking the proper steps to a healthy lifestyle, but it is not without a struggle. In the new year we are going to started a HEALTHY LIFESTYLE series, so keep coming back and we will get through this struggle together.