Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/K3jUwpv4zXE A viewer on YouTube asks the following question: I am not type two diabetic but my doctor has given me farxiga for weight loss cause I am 225 lbs and 5' 2 with a bmi of 39.9. Would you consider this drug safe for just weight loss? I responded to her with the following: Farxiga is not FDA-approved for any use in non-diabetics.   There are no published experimen...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/e4ZbolZk2_g Eating foods high in antioxidants will lower your risk of developing age-related cataracts.   This is the conclusion of a meta-analysis from Australia and China recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The investigators reviewed 20 studies from as many world nations.   Their data indicates that eating citrus fruits, carrots, tomatoes,...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/gBkcwslZo1w Tired of shelling out 3 bucks for that Starbucks Latte.   You might just derive some of the same emotional and psychological effect by looking at a picture of it. Management researchers at the University of Toronto’s Rotman Management School studied responses to seeing even glimpses of coffee-related images.   Called priming, such images caused the subjects to...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/EyLBqke2qcI Here’s a quickie exercise routine that can lower your blood pressure, reduce your risk of heart attack, boost your fitness, and sharpen your brainpower.   The best part is that there is no weight lifting, jogging, or sweating involved. Integrative physiologists at the University of Colorado reported to the recent Experimental Biology scientific meeting that ex...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/B8MTjm8lgMQ Building on increasing evidence that the bacteria residing in our gastrointestinal system influence our brain function, a team of biotechnologists at Arizona State University report beneficial effects of gut bacterial manipulation on the behavior and GI symptoms of autistic subjects. Their latest report in the journal Scientific Reports catalogs the long-term...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/3YqEXRoSpzw Usin whitening strips to wipe away those coffee and nicotine stains from your dental enamel makes your teeth sparkle.   But…..the chemical reactions that occur beneath the surface could trigger a time bomb.   This warning comes from biochemical studies at New Jersey’s Stockton University that were presented last week to the American Society for Biochemistry an...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/IUS_Wp0n4yk CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, the disease caused by repetitive head trauma is typically only diagnosable by autopsies.   It was discovered by post-mortem brain examinations of professional football and soccer players that sustained repetitive head trauma.   CTE may soon be routinely diagnosable in the living.   Radiologists at Boston University’s med...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/z99bXE9KVcI The drugs in question are those that make men’s urine flow and their hair grow.   Many men take finasteride, better known as Proscar and Propecia, to shrink their prostates to improve urine flow and others take the same medicine help hair grow on their scalps.   A new study from Scotland’s University of Edinburgh reveals that this drug and its cousin dutasteri...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/YuySgR0brbM If you are trying to teach yourself new skills, either physical or mental, give your brain a short break during the learning process.   Neurophysiologists at the National Institutes of Health make this recommendation after analyzing the brain activity of volunteers as they master the task of reproducibly pressing a series of keys. The scientists noted that bra...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/PVtH56EdCSQ Nasty bacteria are everywhere, and petting zoos turn out to have some of the nastiest.   An Israeli study of some 8 randomly selected petting zoos in that country reveals that an alarming number of animals are carrying drug resistant E. coli that can and do spread to human visitors. These results were presented this week at a meeting of the European Society of...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/rBYdLg2PUlg Patients admitted to an ICU for any medical problem, whether it directly affects the mind or not, is likely to be discharged with a thought disorder properly labeled a neuropathy.   Neuroscientists at Ontario’s Western University report this result after studying 20 patients who entered their hospital’s ICU with non-neurologic problems. Each patient was assess...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/NsMPlTzykEk Psychologists have been debating over the past century whether or not smiling will actually make you feel happier.   Most thought that smiling was indeed a picker-upper until 3 years ago when a landmark study questioned that premise. Psychologists at the University of Tennessee now provide a more definitive answer to the question by performing a meta-analysis...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/jBofMI-f1Kw A long, healthy life with continued mobility depends on healthy, toned muscles, and many turn to weight lifting to achieve that goal.   Turns out, though, that not all types of weight lifting exercises do the trick. A study presented just last week at the congress of the European Society of Cardiology shows muscle power rather than muscle strength is the impor...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/6TU_86VpCwU The turn of the century has not been good for kids choking on and swallowing foreign bodies.   Data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System just published in the journal Pediatrics shows that twice as many kids are choking on and swallowing foreign bodies now compared with 20 years ago. A majority of ingestions involved infants and toddlers 1 t...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/RjgMACy-N8U Should you eat fruit with toast or eggs and ham for your first meal of the day if you’re a type 2 diabetic.   The answer comes from the University of British Columbia, and the eggs win hands down. Researchers there studied 23 adults with non-insulin dependent diabetes and randomly fed them a meal plan that contained identical numbers of calories and differed o...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/P7jQ9uSWZbA This is Health News You Should Use, the latest medical discoveries and some commonsense advice that you can use in a practical way to keep yourself and your family healthy.     Here are this weeks stories: Baby Sleeper-Rockers Kill Phone App Relaxes PTSD Victims Flossing Helps Prevent Dementia Medical Applications For Cannabis Teen Screen Time May Not Be Harmf...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/u65P0vJGT3Q Children as young as four can learn the principles of responsible philanthropy, and they are more than willing participants in the decision-making process. This is the finding from a study at Britain’s University of Kent. A group of 150 children aged 4 to 8 years were presented information about a series of charitable causes worthy of their donations.   They d...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/IvZRlvtWJ-o Walnuts can suppress the expression of genes in breast cancers.   In so doing, the nuts may be able stop breast cancer from growing locally and and spreading. Oncologist researchers from Marshall University just published a study in the journal Nutrition Research that conclusively demonstrates in both women with breast cancer and in a mouse model injected with...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/KpcGVJYjk-g The majority of American parents believe that young children should not be playing tackle football.   A study recently published in the journal Pediatrics tabulated the results of a nationwide survey. Over 1000 parents completed the survey.   Sixty-one percent definitely favored restrictions and another 24% were leaning toward bans on tackling for younger chil...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/pk5wJguNNLw Pregnant women with long work commutes may are more likely to experience a slow fetal growth rate and to deliver a low birth weight baby.   Health economists at Lehigh University drew this conclusion from New Jersey birth records and information about the lengths of the   associated maternal commutes. Each 10 miles of commuting distance over a 50 mile threshol...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/iasDGPN5naM The FDA has just issued a special warning that some e-cigarette users have developed seizures.   Nicotine toxicity can lower a persons seizure threshold. Seizures have previously only been reported in cases of accidental e-cigarette liquid ingestion.   Now case reports are coming in where seizures are occurring in those vaping for the first time but also in mo...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/nu3KJdwFFJw Nearly 20% of fatal strokes occurring in younger persons are due to illicit drug use and abuse.   This is the conclusion of a new study from Australia’s National Drug and Alcohol Research Center. The investigators studied 279 persons aged 15 to 44 years who died of stroke.   The most frequent drug implicated was methamphetamine.   None of the stroke victims we...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/_EiQgYiu9d0 Since we just learned that sugar will not sweeten your mood, we look to psychologists from the Iowa State University to provide an alternative to a Hershey bar or a glass of sangria.   They just published a study in the Journal of Happiness Studies that suggests a very good alternative. The researchers had groups of college students test 3 potentially mood-ele...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/ZNIoRMpE1Po Does sugar really turbocharge you and improve your mood?   A study by British and German psychologists just published in Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews says absolutely not. The researchers performed a meta-analysis of 31 studies covering nearly 1300 adults.   The investigations looked at how the quantity and type of sugar ingested affected alertness, fati...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/CXEY8458XWQ Kids whose parents read 5 books a day to them enter school with exposure to 1.4 million more words more than those children who parents did not read to them.   Even reading one book a day to your child will give them almost 300,000 more words as they begin kindergarten. This data comes from Ohio State’s Center For Early Childhood Research and Policy.   With th...