Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/3f5DYU6F4ZA This is Health News You Should Use, the latest medical discoveries and commonsense advice that you can use in a practical way to keep yourself and your family healthy.   Here are this weeks stories : Relieve Your Hot Pepper Heartburn Make A Date - Get A Free Meal CBD Kills Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria Your Cell Phone Is Polluted With Bacteria Cheap Home Exerc...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/P1tlzAik8wY Relaxing yourself before going in that examining room will help you get much more from your visit.   Psychologists at the University of Michigan studied nearly 1500 subjects to determine if interventions that induced more positivity and openness to information would result in a more relaxed and productive health maintenance encounter. The study mimicked a do...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/-EFYrk5NLnM If you love falling asleep with the TV treating you to Law and Order or if you merely leave a light on in the room, you’d better watch that scale.     The NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences studied nearly 44,000 women in the so-called Sister Study of women’s disease.   The researchers questioned the participants about their sleeping ha...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/XMWrYblrEB4 Grapefruit and grapefruit juice may cause you to overdose on many popular prescription drugs.   The FDA now repeats its 2017 warning to us and asks us to carefully read the label on any drug you are taking to see if grapefruit can interfere with its function Grapefruit juice blocks the enzyme in the small intestine that normally breaks down drugs causing you...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/7YWEoizy0y4 Taking frequent vacations is associated with a lower risk of developing the metabolic syndrome, that deadly triad of heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.   This welcome news comes from Syracuse University’s Department of Public Health. The study focused on 63 university workers, and the researchers compiled information about their vacations and health status...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/fN_v_Z1pldM When we comment about the taste of our food, the overwhelming conclusion is “it’s TOO SWEET!”   This is the “bittersweet" conclusion from tabulation of almost 400,000 food reviews by Philadelphia’s Monell Chemical Senses Center. The scientists there used artificial intelligence techniques to analyze data about the taste, texture, and smell of nearly 68,000 u...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/ZhRZAnOkg7c Taking music instruction and playing an instrument boosts high school students’ scores in their academic courses.   This study of some 112,000 Canadian high school students just published in the Journal of Educational Psychology is a biting indictment of local school boards that frequently vote to eliminate music programs in favor of taxpayer-supported sport...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/i340ytno-fs Giving kids ibuprofen, that is Advil or Motrin, rather than acetaminophen, Tylenol, after tonsillectomy with or without adenoidectomy more than doubles a child’s risk of serious bleeding that requires a return to the operating room.   This conclusion comes from a multi-center study of some 741 children aged 2-18 years coordinated by pediatric ENT specialists...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/2-t7Mb_teLA Drinking coffee will help you lose weight.   A new British study just published in Scientific Reports shows for the first time that the caffeine in coffee triggers a mitochondrial uncoupling protein which in turn increases calorie-burning brown fat cell activity in both cultured cells and in human volunteers.   More brown fat cell tissue versus white fat cel...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/lAf8hPSrMqw Imagine that you’re waiting for a biopsy report, a job offer, a college or grad school acceptance, or a colonoscopy.   You’re on pins and needles anxious. Just how do you cope?   A new study from UC-Riverside gives you a novel strategy: watching an awe-inducing or heart-tugging movie. The researchers studied a total of 729 subjects all stressed awaiting impo...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/EQ7EgP1MNSM It’s an old saw, but a French study just published in the journal Stroke puts yet another black mark next to the concept of overwork.   Working long hours, defined as 10 hours a day for at least 50 days a year will increase your risk of stroke by 29%.   If you consistently work long hours for 10 or more years, your risk of a stroke rises to 45%. You’re proba...

Vidcast:   tps://youtu.be/KAKxzmjoacw So you’re out of shape and finding your body toning workout impossibly grueling.   A   Canadian study just published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise shows that listening to upbeat music as you work up that sweat will sweeten your experience. Music is a known dissociative influence that distracts you from the consequences of exercise including s...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/HHJZs5YRDXU You know you should exercise but you don’t have the time or money for a health club.   A British study just published in the Journal of Physiology shows that you can keep fit with three 20 minute home sessions a week using high intensity training and virtual but not direct supervision. The researchers studied some of the toughest cases, 32 obese adults at ri...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/dzrI4PAJc3E A Brazilian study just presented last week at the American Society for Microbiology reminds us just how contaminated our cell phones can be.   Forty percent of the phones carried by university students were infested with antibiotic-resistant Staph Aureus .   Even more frightening but not surprising is that fact that the majority of such phones were in the ha...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/QAUrV6t24sc The non-psychoactive component of weed may be one way to control menacing supergerms that are no longer sensitive to our strongest antibiotics.   Australian microbiologists presented their exciting findings at last week’s meeting of the American Society For Microbiology. Studies of topical CBD as treatment for a variety of skin conditions revealed that this...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/vr8B0vBAEoI Nearly one- quarter to one-third of women surveyed in two recent psychological studies admitted that they only set up a date to get a free meal.   This so-called “foodie call” phenomenon was analyzed by teams at Azusa Pacific University and UC-Merced. The researchers surveyed a total of nearly 1200 women # The two-thirds to three-quarters of women who had no...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/wyBHE3qHJ2o If you’re suffering stomach and esophageal ache from enjoying Buffalo wings or accidentally swallowing that red pepper hidden in your Szechuan chicken , the food scientists at Penn State have some first aid for you.   It turns out that the best liquid for neutralizing pepper burn is good old milk. The study looked at 72 subjects each using 7 different liquid...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Yi3WTYMJtcw This is Health News You Should Use, the latest medical discoveries and commonsense advice that you can use in a practical way to keep yourself and your family healthy.   Here are this weeks stories : Medical Reversals Make Some Therapy Obsolete Visiting Mother Nature Is Healthy White Coat Hypertension Is Dangerous Eat Lots Of Red Meat And Die Earlier Exercise...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/Dw1wOG3lpec Eating yogurt twice a week lowers a man’s risk of developing adenomatous, cancer-producing polyps by 26%.   Researchers studied colonoscopy data from over 88,000 participants in the continuing Health Professionals and Nurses Health Studies.   Sadly, the data did not show any beneficial association between yogurt consumption and polyps in women. The investiga...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/k8fA_BxQ9d4 If you avoid trying new foods, so called food neophobia, you might just be starving your body of proper nutrients leading to obesity and declining health.   Population data on some 4000 subjects was tabulated by two Finnish universities and just published in The American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition . Food fear was associated with a reduced dietary quality...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/TzbK0xNiGhM The pattern of the words you use on social media generally and on Facebook specifically can help your doctors and you identify your unique set of medical problems including diabetes and a bevy of psychological issues including anxiety, depression, and frank psychosis.   Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania processed the language in nearly 1 million...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/G6aozfdBiuk Big business is pushing yet another unhealthy, addictive habit on our teens and young adults.   We can now add tanning’s carcinogenic UV radiation to tobacco’s cancer-triggering smoke, vaping’s addicting nicotine, and alcohol’s liver damaging metabolites. Community medicine and public health investigators at the University of Colorado reviewed the advertisin...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/aD8qLWYK4Ms   The stereotype is a very chubby teen wolfing down chips and popcorn while endlessly perfecting Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto skills.   The latest meta-analysis of some 20 studies reviewing data from 38,000 gamers show that there is no correlation between child and teen video game use and obesity.   Wait!   There IS a link between gaming and excessive weig...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/2mYjnj9F5Tk As our planet overheats but you still should be exercising, a cooling vest may become more important than those high tech Nike shoes.   A study from the Hiroshima University just published in Frontiers in Physiology. Researchers there developed and tested an ice pack-laden vest.   They provided it to 8 professional soccer players whom they challenged   with...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/nWqioZcv0VA Is your Fitbit or your Facebook page better at predicting your state of health?   Computer scientists at the University of Notre Dame now say that the strength of your social network is better than fitness wearables at predicting just how health you are.   The investigators collected social info, Fitbit data, and a general health history from nearly 700 Notr...