Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7Pwwss9CX/ Women who smoke consistently from 14 weeks before conception to 10 weeks after it carry fetuses that are consistently underweight and are born with a notable weight deficit.  Dutch researchers studied 689 pregnant women between 2010 and 2018 and compared the babies carried by the smokers with the non-smokers.   Those who smoked a half-pack a day o...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7N1J7gD4e/ A child’s level of dislike for a given food rather than how much the child likes that food is a better predictor of consumption at any given meal.  Penn State nutritionists studied 61 children 4 to 6 years of age who were asked to rate the 7 foods presented to them on a meal tray: chicken nuggets, grapes, potato chips, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, k...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq31GOIvydl/ Two-thirds of Americans don’t know that drinking alcohol increases their cancer risk. This from a National Cancer Institute survey of 3,865 adults statistically representative of nearly 254 million Americans.   Looking at the details, nearly 80% are unaware that wine poses a risk, 75% don’t know that beer poses a cancer danger, and 69% are unaware...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlxV2QMvcJ/ Dr. Smith gives his WBZ Radio listeners a tip regarding the do-it-yourself Heimlich-type maneuver that actually preceded Heimlich’s report.  The Flake Maneuver was developed by Boston Children's Hospital ENT specialist Carlyle Flake MD. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-10-04-8703150357-story.html #choking #flakemaneuver #heimlic...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqlv6CwJEMx/ Lead-in by WBZ’s Gary LaPierre Dr. Smith reports on his WBZ Medical Minute the sad New England Journal posting about a young man who swallowed a toothpick with ultimately fatal consequences. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457300.2021.1930059?journalCode=nics20 #toothpick #bowels #eyes #perforation 

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqluJoPL-zs/ Dr. Smith takes a WBZ Radio on-air call from the mother of a 6 year old with recurrent ear infections and persistent middle ear fluid.  They discuss a medical approach than can prevent the need for tube surgery. https://www.drhowardsmith.com/book #earinfections #earfluid #otitis #serousotitis #eartubes #wbznewsradio

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqltDI9ML0A/ The Lyme Disease season begins in April and peaks in the summer.  On his WBZ Radio program Dr. Howard Smith OnCall he provides an Early Bird Special about Lyme disease and what you need to know to protect yourself.  Get the excellent online CDC Lyme disease pamphlet at: http://bitly.ws/CtXw #lyme #ticks #rash #arthritis #cardiac #wbznewsradio

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlsBw2LUL9/ Stocky, young athletes often experience disordered sleep snd breathing patterns that could predispose them to heart attack and sudden death.  Exercise scientists from Japan’s Showa University explored this situation by studying 42 male rugby players 18-19 years of age.   After formal sleep studies were completed, 43% of the players experienced sig...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlrKbLOWAu/ Wearing a weighted vest for just 3 weeks could help you lose 5 times more weight.  A new study from Sweden’s University of Gothenberg studied weight loss in 69 mildly obese subjects. The experimental group wore 24 pound vests while the control group wore 2 lb vests over the study period.  The weigh-in at the end clocked a 3.5 pound average weight...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlqMNYtF48/ Those who tend to be anxious have a 6th sense superpower that effectively protects them from danger.  A new study from Caltech’s cognitive neuroscience department shows that anxious individuals more effectively flee from subtle dangers. The study participants were challenged with a series of virtual reality threats characterized as slow that are i...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlpXagJLR5/ Women with these vasomotor symptoms or VMS are 70% more likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes over time.  Epidemiologists at Australia’s University of Queenland just published this warning after their meta-analysis of 23,365 women. The risk of adverse cardiovascular consequences rises with severity of hot flushes and night sweats but not with...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqloQolNZsw/ If your child has a tonsillectomy, don’t use ibuprofen, Motrin or Advil, to control post-operative pain.  A study from Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital shows that these drugs increase the risk of bleeding following tonsillectomy by 36%. The study analyzed more than one-half million children under 18 years who underwent tonsil removal between 2...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlnXeBPkY_/ Concussion, dementia, and sleep deprivation produce similar changes to your brain’s architecture as determined by a novel MRI imaging analysis.  Oregon investigators now present data from their study of 56 Afghanistan war vets and suggest possible therapeutic approaches to TBI and dementia. Their imaging data shows a correlation between battle bra...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlmmkoN8Bd/ Exercising during your off-hours can reduce your chances of death by as much as 40%.  Ironically, though, high physical exertion at work actually increases your death risk by 27%.  Danish researchers present these conclusions after studying the mortality data from a cohort of 104,046 Danes and tabulating it with self-reported physical activity dur...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqll0nvsVSx/ Barring US teens 14 to 17 years of age from using indoor tanning facilities would prevent more than 18,401 melanoma cases and save $205 million healthcare dollars.  This from a microsimulation study just published in the journal Cancer. Banning tanning bed use for the 17.1 million US minors would prevent 15,101 primary melanoma cases and 3,299 pote...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqlk7ZuMKQp/ Hitting speed bumps at speeds exceeding 28 mph may cause brain injuries to a 3rd trimester fetus and uterine stress for the mother.  This warning comes from engineers at the University of British Columbia. The investigators derived their conclusions from models that calculate the effects of speed bump shear on the fetal brain as well as the uterus...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlkFDSr42o/ Those who consistently walk at a brisk pace have cells that are measurably 53% younger compared with those who walk at an average pace.  British researchers studied data from nearly 406 middle-aged persons with data in the UK Biobank and correlated self-reported walking speeds with a quantitative measure of cellular aging, the white cell telomere...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqljJk2J6IK/ Those drinking coffee prior to shopping in stores spend 50% more money and purchases 30% more items than non-coffee drinkers.  Academic marketing investigators at the University of South Florida studied 300 subjects shopping in stores in France and in Spain. One-half of the shoppers were provided a free cup of coffee containing 100 mg of caffeine....

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqliClYMXMu/ Even a double dose of Plan B, levonorgestrel, the most common morning after pill, fails to significantly reduce the chances of ovulation and therefore pregnancy in obese women.  Oregon Health and Science University investigators studied 70 women with a mean age of 28, a mean body mass index of 38, and a body weight of greater than 175 pounds. The...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqWJ_zyPDUy/ You may get more than a case of the Mondays if you hit the ol’ office water fountain after a weekend or holiday closure.  Purdue University engineers issue this warning after their in-depth study of water in a 10 year old 3 story so-called green office building.   The building’s water quality was assessed for minerals and bacteria including legion...

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/cZtT857ufMI The young women who experience migraines and become pregnant are more likely to suffer sometimes dire complications.  Investigators at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital issue this warning after analyzing more than 30,000 pregnancies in about 19,000 women over a 20 year period. The data shows that pregnant women with migraine headaches are 17% more likely...

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/5QhZSbGyFBU Some 43% of elementary school aged children with insomnia continue to suffer from it into adolescence and young adulthood.  This from a Penn State longitudinal study of 502 children initially studied when they were 5 to 12 years of age with followup evaluations 7 and 15 years later when they were at median ages of 16 years and 24 years. In addition to the 43%...

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/hwrJXQWsOoo Lifelong exercise not only keeps your body fat from over-accumulating but it also fine tunes its metabolic activity helping to prevent diabetes, obesity, and cancer.  Researchers at the University of Copenhagen make these claims after comparing the fat cells from 20 something male couch potatoes with those from 60 something men who either avoided exercise, ex...

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/ebairnRI7-Y Children repeatedly brow-beaten by angry, screaming, and abusive parents have measurably smaller brain structures in adolescence.  University of Montreal researchers studied 94 children 2.5 to 9 years of age at study onset. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/development-and-psychopathology/article/abs/prefrontal-cortex-and-amygdala-anatomy-in-youth-with-...

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/Lcpzkt6bjlw Eating breakfast before 8:30 in the morning reduces factors associated with development of type 2 diabetes.  So say Northwestern University nutritional researchers. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/03/210318091646.htm #diabetes #breakfast #insulin #insulinresistance #glucose