Dr. Howard Smith Reports

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/SCgKVBviePU   There’s an epidemic of concussions among college students, and surprisingly most victims are not the football, rugby, and lacrosse players.   A new study from the University of Colorado at Boulder shows that the   $   highest concussion rates occur in non-athletes and in women.   Non-athletes were 57% more likely than athletes to sustain concussions and...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/Ge7ktfyeQJ0   Accumulations of belly fat and love handles are associated with a reduction in our problem-solving powers.   This from an Iowa State University study of more than 4400 middle-aged men and women.   The researchers measured both belly and waist fat as well as lean muscle mass.   Participants with belly fat accumulations were the worst problem solvers follo...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/LKuMWAYkpEc   If you hope that a 23andMe test will predict health, don’t waste your money.   The largest meta-analysis of genetic testing, completed by the University of Alberta, shows that garden-variety mutations make only a 5 to 10% contribution to most disease.   These mutations, so called single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs, have a negligible impact on cancer...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/wPMaVIrDLvM   Pink artificial sweetener, once wrongfully accused of triggering bladder cancer, may ironically help create new cancer chemotherapy drugs.   Data just published in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry shows that saccharin prevents cancer cells from surviving in tumors’ typical low oxygen conditions.   Saccharin blocks the activity of tumor-specific carboni...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/OHxcJZNPSx8   Children reading digital books that provide animated feedback recall more of what they read.   Educational psychologists at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University studied ninety 3 to 5 year olds comparing their comprehension of material read from board books, static digital books and animated digital books.   When a book’s illustrations move in response...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/MvRPC47OMgE   If you’re pregnant and work two night shifts in any given week, you significantly increase your chances of suffering a miscarriage.   Danish occupational medicine specialists reviewed the data from nearly 23,000 pregnant women a for a study recently published online.   The data revealed that, after the 8th week of pregnancy, women who worked two or more...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/bXBHj2hjj-M   Do you cringe at the thought of looking down from bridge or tall building, going up in a balloon, or parasailing?   Are you afraid of falling even if you are only up on a chair?   Some caution makes sense, but if you have a pathologic fear that limits your life choices then you probably suffer from acrophobia or the extreme, irrational phobia about heigh...

  xvid https://youtu.be/vV1J4sIPyy0   Paying creatives for every idea they churn out led to optimal results.   The alternatives, paying for idea quality or offering no motivational reward at all, fell flat according to studies by business school researchers at The University of Texas-Austin and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign.   Their data also demonstrated the most interesting finding...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/VLC_LDRCHwI   If you’re overweight and suffering from migraine headaches, dropping those extra pounds will literally take a load off your mind.   This conclusion comes from a new study by Italy’s University of Padova recently presented to the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.   Researchers there conducted a meta-analysis of 10 studies covering more 473 migraine...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/wGewmy9_u90   A green light over the salad bar and a red light over the burgers and fries triggers healthier and environmentally more responsible food choices.   Experimental psychologists at London’s Queen Mary University set up a lunchtime canteen and studied the choices of over 400 subjects.   They conducted two experiments.   In the first, one group of subjects sa...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/uttUY1yfe9Q   Playing organized team sports grows the hippocampus, the brain’s emotion and memory center, while reducing the incidence of adult depression.   This is the finding by neuroscientists at the Washington University-St. Louis.     They studied a nationwide sample over over 4000 children 9 to 11 years of age using questionnaires to determine their participati...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/OxOPYMo9fdk   The knee takes a beating in many athletic contests, and anterior cruciate ligament repair is a frequent operative event in the world of sports medicine.   During recovery, though, there tends to be a loss of muscle mass and bone density despite good rehabilitation therapy.   Orthopedic surgeons at Houston’s Methodist Hospital report to the American Ortho...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/rU2V0Knw6ZE   Pregnant women will suffer colds and may get the flu despite receiving the flu vaccines.   When that occurs, the babies they are carrying are more likely to develop excessive neural sensitivity.   That in turn leads to agitation for infants and toddlers and attention deficits and even serious psychosis such as schizophrenia later in life.   A study by Un...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/o7vWyfz-n7w   Sit-stand desks, so-called SSDs, are no miracle.   This conclusion stems from a University of Pittsburgh meta-analysis of some 53 studies.   The Pitt bioengineers conclude that these convertible desks do drive less sitting, can improve back pain issues, may make their users somewhat more comfortable, and can lower your blood pressure a bit.   They will n...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/yPUzPyQOAVw   Ninety percent of the most popular prescription medications in the US contain one or more ingredients that may make you sick.   Now, I’m not talking about the main or so-called active ingredient but rather about the inactive ingredients that are added to pills, capsules, and liquids to improve shelf life, absorption, and taste.   A study just released by...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/5PFjaUwlKzQ   We can neutralize our stress and anxiety with song, a stuffed animal, and even another person.   Psychologists at Yale and Cornell present this stress antidote adding that a safety signal triggers an entirely different neural network than that through which behavioral therapy operates.   Subjects, both human and mice, were exposed to both threatening obj...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/XZ5zruOCTWI   Australians, forever known as industrial strength meat eaters, have found a way to continue their habit while still eating heart healthy.   Enter the Mediterranean-Pork diet.     It fuses the typical med diet of fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains and olive oils with 2-3 weekly servings of fresh lean pork,   Research at the University of...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/qzPedk35i7g   Eating red meat and fatty foods will more than triple your risk of going blind over time. So says a collaborative University of Buffalo-University of Wisconsin study just published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology .   The investigators reviewed the dietary preferences of 144 patients with various stages of macular degeneration.   Those consuming a...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/tBJw-6SRtGk   Drummers develop simplified connections between the two halves of their brain and more efficiently organized motor control zones.   A German study just published in the journal Brain and Behavior draws these conclusions from their MRI studies of 20 professional drummers with close to 177,000 hours of drumming under their sticks.   The drummers compared w...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/p1I6x7NGREA   Midwife-directed childbirth in a warm water-filled bathtub instead of a bed are just as safe and result in fewer vaginal tears and episiotomies.   University of Michigan obstetric nurses derive these conclusions from their comparison of 397 water births with over 2000 land births.   Those infants born in water were no more likely to require NICU admissio...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/dwCg-YKSBuk   Different brain regions activate when you see justifiable assaults versus gratuitous brutality.   University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists recruited 26 college students to view 90 second movie scenes depicting defensible violence from Taken and White House Down but also unwarranted strong-arming from Skyfall , and Jack Reacher .   Brain activity was st...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/prrcksSUdOU   Viral colds can’t be cured.   Nose blowing makes them worse, but my ABCDE program can keep them under a week without triggering bacterial sinus or chest infections.   A stands for taking an Anti-inflammatory such as Advil or aspirin that reduces pain and congestion.   B is for achieving Bacterial control and eliminating crusts with nasal application of t...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/srussDWNdZU   Playing sports enhances your brain’s ability to process environmental sounds and eliminate background noise.   Neuroscientists at Northwestern University report this finding after studying nearly 500 student-athletes and matched controls.   Delivering speech through earbuds and recording participants’ brain waves, researchers discovered playing collegiat...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/LbrAqKFbud8   A huge Harvard study definitively associates symptoms of gastrointestinal reflux disease with the ingestion of caffeinated beverages and soda.   Participating were more than 48,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study who had no diagnosed gastrointestinal reflux disease.   Analyzing data from nearly 263,000 person-years of follow up, regular coffee drinkers...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/pE42m2UaxVI   Feeling loved escalates your feelings of self-worth and optimism to the highest levels.   Penn State psychologists studied 212 participants by smartphone polling their self-assessments of being loved and feeling happy or sad.   Phone surveys appeared randomly 6 times a day over a 4 week period.   They explored love in the broadest sense not restricting i...