Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/35EBOOTfQ2Q 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 : IVF and Heart Failure During Pregnancy   Weed Use In Adolescence Numbs The Adult Brain Overweight Teen Boys Risk Later Heart Failure Premies Brains Develop Better...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/FUVxNDRAE_c Advertising that touts electric hookah smoking to be safer than charcoal hookah smoking is a scam. Chemists and engineers at the American University of Beirut studied waterpipe smoking of tobacco heated by these two methods. The study measured toxin emissions by three commercially available electric hookahs and compared them to emissions from charcoal-heated...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/GV9b0yDqklU Banking tissue with sperm-producing cells may be an alternative for those boys and even older males too young or too sick to bank sperm prior to medical treatments that threaten their later fertility.   This conclusion comes from an 8 year study recently published in the journal Human Reproduction. As many as 2,000 boys and young men undergo sterilizing chem...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/SMdWVe6wd0U Parental reading to toddlers improves their behaviors and reduces the need for escalating disciplinary measures.   Pediatricians at Rutgers Medical and Public Health Schools studied nearly 2200 parent-child pairs across 20 US metropolitan areas. The study found that shared reading enhances the child’s communication skills and emotional development, and it en...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/KIZUEQ9_8YY Children and adolescents with continuing obesity show significant stiffening of their arteries toward the end of their teen years.   This is the frightening finding in a study of more than 3400 Swedish kids just published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health journal. Childhood obesity and a high fat mass tends to foster high blood pressures, elevated lipi...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/JZXcwKbysIw Babies born weighing less than 1.5 kg or 3.3 pounds are four times more likely than normal birthweight infants to suffer reduced pulmonary capacity when they reach their teen and young adult years.   This conclusion comes from an international meta-analysis of 11 studies and over 1700 subjects by Australian OBGYN researchers. Those with low birth weights, fr...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/wA3BlzJz0Gc If you’re having an ACL repair, don’t plan on getting back into the action for at least a year following the surgery.   This is the recommendation that springs from a study at Sweden’s University of Gothenburg. Sports medicine researchers there studied some 729 athletes undergoing repair of their anterior cruciate ligaments following game injuries.   Those w...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/ZhsT6oQ4B5s Exercise during pregnancy keeps moms fit and their weight gain under better control.   It also has beneficial effects on placental function and development of the baby. A study from Washington State University, performed in a mouse model and just published in the Journal of Physiology , shows that consistent exercise helps placental vascularization and norma...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/NVHQsaoGaCE Urban legend has it that fainting while pregnant is no big deal.   A study just published by Canadian cardiologists and epidemiologists finds that fainting, the common term for syncope, while pregnant is a bad prognostic sign for both the mother and her developing baby. The researchers studied more than 480,000 babies and their mothers.   Though fainting is...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/-5G0axMe2LQ Those with tell-tale heart attack symptoms wait on average 3 hours before seeking emergency help.   That shocking statistic comes from a study by Swedish cardiologists at the Karolinska University Hospital that investigated the reasons for such a life-threatening delay. Their study followed 326 patients having either a first or a second heart attack.   Some...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/pIvjASoILKg A German study reveals an association between seasonal allergies and anxiety as well as a link between year-round or perennial allergies with depression.   Psychologists at the University of Augsburg studied more than 1700 middle-aged persons with a variety of allergies including environmental, food, and drug hypersensitivities.   The researchers point out t...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/BZa4b6iu7Xs Calling addictive substance abuse a disease negatively impacts the addicts’ efforts to get sober.   This is the conclusion of a study from the University of North Carolina just published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology . The researchers studied 214 men and women with substance abuse problems.   One group received growth mindset messaging and...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/UFtArWv0Arw Premature infants who listen to music enjoy enhanced neural development.   Swiss neuroscientists at the University of Geneva report the positive effects of specially composed and performed music on developing neural networks of premies. The musical selections varied with time of day and were designed to lend an auditory structure to the infant’s first days o...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/RghCkNItbYQ Obesity in the teen years increases the chances of heart weakening and heart failure in middle age by a factor of eight.   But wait, that’s not the worst news.   Even mildly overweight adolescent guys risk heart disease in their 40s and 50s. These conclusions come from a study of nearly 1.7 million Swedish military recruits who were weighed at age 18 as they...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/sG9x8bkrmOg Marijuana is legal throughout Canada, and a study just presented to the Canadian Neuroscience Meeting shows that teens regularly using it suffer impairment of their memory, decision-making, and impulsivity-control skills. Neuroscientists at The University of   Montreal studied over 3800 teens entering high school and followed them during the subsequent 4 yea...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/dAJdcux1xZI Women who use assisted reproduction techniques including in-vitro fertilization and intracystoplasmic sperm injection are 5 times more likely to suffer pregnancy-associated heart failure.   This conclusion comes from a study at Germany’s Hannover Medical School presented last week to the European Society of Cardiology. This pregnancy-associated heart failure...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/BHsfjlX86Mg 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 : Management of Asthma Changing Button Battery Dangers TELL ME WHY: Coffee is Good For Your Gut Bowel Cancer Rising In Over-fed Young Adults Measles Will Become Epidemic Un...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/K5dWdmkXykI Pharmaceutical companies are the corporations that most of us love to hate for their unabashed greed in raising drug prices to astronomical levels.   Here’s one drug company that deserves sustained applause rather than scorn for its generosity.   The story is told by good news network.org . Gilead Sciences, a biopharmaceutical company based in Foster City, C...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/g5bWW3_0-7g Women over 30 with an interest in motherhood constantly have an eye on that ticking biological clock.   The latest study from Rutgers University suggests that men also need to pay attention to old Father Time if they want to produce healthy offspring. The study reviewed nearly half a century of research on fertility and healthy reproduction.   Men 45 years o...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/HYkk6YqL5iU Death due to congestive heart failure has been on the rise over the past 7 years, and the group most affected is surprisingly those under 65.   A new study from Northwestern University cardiologists looks at CDC epidemiologic data for nearly 48 million Americans from 35 to 84 years of age. The study shows that the trend toward declining death rates from hear...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/-UtbUESmvgM Orthorexia nervosa is medical jargon for an obsession with healthy eating.   Psychologists from Toronto’s York University explain the drivers and dangers of this condition in a review article just published in the journal Appetite . Orthorexia nervosa tends to develop in those individuals with a history of eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive personalities...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/qkRJ7UIEFVM The myth that falling asleep to the TV is good for children is now dispelled by a study from the University of ‘Massachusetts-Amherst.   Developmental specialists and neuroscientists there studied some 470 preschoolers and their parents using electronic sleep monitoring and questionnaires for behavioral assessment. Thirty-four percent of the kids had TVs in...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/R6j4W6aPTgc Kids with teeth that protrude are at significant risk for a lifetime of dental problems.   An Australian study of more than 50,000 children and adolescents was just published in the journal Dental Traumatology . The data reveals that children under the age of six with teeth that protrude more than 3 millimeters are more than 3 times more likely to sustain se...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/G3--3Vsow-c The ready availability of marijuana had both positive and negative impacts on the use of hospital services in the state of Colorado.   Cardiologists and epidemiologists at UC-San Francisco studied some hospital records from Colorado comparing utilization before and after pot legalization.   On the positive side, there were fewer hospitalizations for chronic...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/RQhzQKE1s0M Inflammatory bowel disease is best treated by simultaneously applying therapies that focus both on the gut and the brain.   A study from Sweden’s University of Gothenberg just published in journal Gastroenterology emphasizes the need a comprehensive, holistic approach to the disease. The researchers studied 400 patients with IBD and matched controls using qu...