Dr. Howard Smith Reports

  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...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/WCVwKnueXMg   Women sleeping 5 hours a night or less were 94% more likely to have whole body osteoporosis compared with those sleeping at least 7 hours.   A study of more than 11,000 postmenopausal women participating in the Women’s Health Initiative was just published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research .   The investigation compared self-reported sleep durat...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/gYEb98stl-8   More pregnant women turn to their own mothers than their doctors or self-help books for advice during pregnancy and child-rearing pointers later.   This from a University of Cincinnati study of   64 pregnant women and 23 almost grandmothers.   Though self-help guidebooks provide solid, factual information, they also tend to create a generational disconne...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/wBNR4ratKno   Up to 90% of cosmetics contain the nastiest superbugs on the planet.   A British study just published in the Journal of Applied Microbiology cultured skin foundation blender sponges, mascara, and lip gloss finding grossly unhygienic conditions.   These contaminated products contain Staph aureus, E. Coli, and Citrobacter freundii that can trigger skin inf...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/ofG8jUtS6HU   Rising temperatures increase the deadly toxin arsenic in rice.   A University of Washington study due to be presented this week to the American Geophysical Union measured the presence of arsenic in rice grown at a variety of temperatures that simulate expected conditions over the remainder of this 21 st century.   As growing temps increase from the 77˚F...

  Vidcast: https://youtu.be/vKr2eAmy9C0   The next unsettling dream you experience is likely exercising your brain to counteract potential disasters during your waking life.   This the conclusion of collaborative Swiss-Wisconsin study of some 107 subjects whose dreams were analyzed via journaling and whose brain activities were quantitated by electroencephalograms and MRI imaging.   Those experien...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/mo3bu81XTS0   If you’re struggling with balance problems due to an accident, an injury, or advancing age, that VR headset laying around the house or on the store shelf may just be the key to your recovery.   Balance specialists and physiotherapists at Sweden’s Lund University now report their results using a virtual reality environment to help subjects train their bal...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/XIwudYNkhHs   Sporadic over-consumption of alcohol during adolescent years leads to epigenetic alterations in the cells of brain tissue, and that modification forever damages later emotional stability.   Experiments proving this phenomenon from the University of Illinois-Chicago were just published in the journal Biological Psychiatry.   Using an adolescent rat model,...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/Pj1dBHEHMa8   The poor ole egg is again under attack again.   Numerous studies over the past 30 years have declared the egg to be innocent of being an accessory before the fact when it comes to driving artery hardening, heart attacks, and strokes.   Many nutrition experts have stated that the majority of the cholesterol in our body is synthesized in the liver from the...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/6bhjhS4GLq4   Smartphones and tablets have not reduced the 90 minutes a day that children and teens traditionally spend with other family members.   Sociologists at the British Universities of Oxford and Warwick reviewed journals from nearly 2500 children 8 to 16 years of age and journals from their parents as well.       The data shows that personal electronics actua...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/yaycsWNG3hw   Sleep deprivation will drive you to consume a wider variety of products.   Marketing researchers from the University of British Columbia’s business school draw this conclusion from several studies of buying patterns as a function of sleepiness.     Their experiments included artificial situations such as choosing candy bars on more or less sleep and a lo...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/XQlxP5qLiz4   Hookah smoking is considered safe and fun.   It attracts teens and young adults by the droves.   This cavalier attitude is drawing alarm from the American Heart Association, and it is time to set the record straight.   Water pipe smoking is industrial strength tobacco smoking.   A one hour hookah session exposes the smoker to the nicotine and tar equival...

Snoring And Sleep Apnea May Lead to Young Athletes’ Sudden Death Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/Y_MjSC0RSQk   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 s...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/kb0cdrP9csU   A one-hour midday nap can help you control your blood pressure as well as taking medications or changing your diet.   Greek cardiologists will be presenting their data demonstrating this effect next week at the American College of Cardiology’s Annual Scientific Sessions.   The researchers studied more than 200 middle aged subjects comparing the blood pre...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/X86AIAevYRc   Abusive bosses who rule with a heavy hand are managing their own failure.   This is the conclusion of a 427 study meta-analysis completed by researchers at Portland State University and published in the Journal of Management.   Managers perceived as unfair, unhelpful, and impersonal trigger counterproductive and passive-aggressive work behaviors includin...

  Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/5R8o82HKzOo   Music can keep groups of people engaged by synchronizing and pacing their brainwaves, but not all types of music have this effect.   Engineers at the City College of New York studied the neural responses of audiences in response to various forms of music.   Their research shows that unfamiliar scores synchronize communal brains most effectively, and the...