Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/TsI8ZjCiebU Our cells, like our homes, fill up with garbage very fast.   The latest research from Harvard Medical School reveals that vigorous exercise and even some fasting will help our cells with their housekeeping duties of removing damaged, toxic, and unnecessary proteins. Previous studies have shown that the signal for flushing your cells is the messenger molecule c...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/2qepToTtCWM Our shoulders take a lot of abuse, and the latest statistics reveal a 6-fold increase in shoulder replacement surgery over the past 20 years.   You’re probably thinking...so what.   We can replace any joint at will, and there is already a good track record for hip and knee replacements. The problem is that joint replacements don’t last.   They wear out, like a...

Health News You Should Use, the latest medical discoveries that you can use in a practical way to keep yourself and your family healthy.     Here are the headlines: Shoulder Replacement Surgery Needs Repeating Exercise Helps Your Body Take Out The Trash You May Be Throwing Away Good Food Salty Food May Trigger Allergy Common Over-The-Counter Antibacterial Deactivates Antibiotics Junk Food Will Dri...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/6c2OtDkNREE Exposing autistic children to situations they instinctively avoid in a safe, virtual environment permits at least 45% of them to conquer their fears and phobias.   A study from Newcastle University just published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders utilizes an immersive projection video environment called the Blue Room with images the kids the...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/OeVhgDxUB-g Vaginal yeast infections are all too common and during pregnancy are frequently treated with oral fluconazole or the branded Diflucan.   New data from over 400,000 pregnancies in Quebec reviewed at the University of Montreal shows that any dose of oral fluconazole is associated with a higher incidence of miscarriage. Fluconazole is known for its induction of l...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/3byI8yHsefY From the “you can’t legislate common sense or morality” department, a study just published in the International Journal of Drug Policy reveals no reduced consumption of marijuana in countries where cannabis use is illegal.   The investigators tabulated World Health Organization data covering more than 100,000 teens living in 38 countries including the US, UK,...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/HKIK6qwIJo8 One enduring challenge in human organ transplantation is detecting rejection crises early enough to save the transplanted organ with the administration of anti-rejection drugs such as high dose steroids.   Typically, rejection is diagnosed with biopsies. By the time a biopsy shows conclusive changes, much of the organ is often destroyed.   A new technique bein...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/TjHd38TFH9A A Danish study just published in BMJ Open reports that short, standard acupuncture sessions will significantly reduce moderate to severe menopausal symptoms. Investigators at the University of Copenhagen using a crossover protocol administered weekly acupuncture therapy for 5 consecutive weeks to a treatment group while the controls received no treatment.   Th...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/q7JCrK5kziY Regularly smoking more than one pack a day may reduce your ability to see colors.   A study from New Jersey’s Rutgers University compared the visual prowess of more than 60 regular smokers with a similar number of controls who smoked fewer than 15 cigarettes in their whole lives. Those smoking 20 plus cigarettes a day, every day, reported significant degradati...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/DU53tdHmq6Q We now know that drinking two or more artificially sweetened beverages a day may trigger strokes, heart disease, and untimely death for middle-aged women.   This from a study of more than 80,000 post-menopausal women participating in the Women’s Health Initiative . Those women who did drink the two a day regularly, when compared with controls who never drank b...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/lqthcPqYONM The gold standard for a school-aged child’s sleep is a good 9 to 11 hours depending on age.   Can you or your children actually tell how long they slept? A study from the University of Arizona just published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine answers yes!   Researchers compared the sleep tallies from questionnaires completed by children and others by th...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/-HhcJ1th6Z8 As our families add children, we parents turn to our older children and encourage them to be the new arrival’s big brother or sister.   The latest intelligence from psychologists at Britain’s University of Warwick reveals the worrisome intelligence that the older siblings instead tend to bully the younger ones. The researchers tabulated data from nearly 6900 B...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/j8mOrrCP-94 One study after another heralds the advantages of breastfeeding.   Some mothers turn to pumping their breast milk when their flow is sporadic or when they develop conflicts with sib childcare or the demands of work.   Do babies enjoy the same advantages from ingesting pumped breast milk? The short answer is an emphatic NO.   Researchers from Canada’s Universit...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/zho25BPRc8w Marijuana use is spreading like wildfire, and the prevailing opinion is that its components are harmless.   Another of this weeks stories highlights its potential danger for those with heart problems.   Now a study from Britain’s University of Oxford and Canada’s McGill University shows that regular cannabis use in adolescence can trigger adult depression and...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/K1gxsErYkQc How many times have we heard our mothers and grandmothers say “Dear..... you better go to sleep to fight off that cold.”   The latest research just published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine now proves that she was dead on! Immunologists from Germany’s University of Tübingen studied T cells from healthy volunteers as they slept or while they were pullin...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/NTxj6-8Dqts We’ve all heard about the narcotic epidemic.   The real news is that there are potent weapons to combat opioid use as close as our medicine cabinets.   Ibuprofen, generic or branded Advil or Motrin, either alone or with acetaminophen, generic or Tylenol, significantly reduced the need for postoperative morphine in a study of more than 550 patients undergoing h...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/_Ea_jZxu15Q   There’s plenty of “Fake News” out there, and some of it is bogus medical, health, and wellness news.   Just how do you know if your sources of health news are legit?     The Health News You Should Use that I present here comes from what I consider to be gold standard outlets.   However, even though true, much of the news out there isn’t useful for most of us...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/ct13uGTrFlA Recreational cannabis use is on the rise as more and more states make it legal.   We can learn a thing or two from our neighbors to the north as weed for fun is completely legal throughout Canada and medicinal marijuana has been in widespread use for years. A just published report in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology reminds us that the new cannabis can be ri...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/ogsYU-IDW14 Those feminine hormones that help to bestow the miracle of reproduction on women may ironically make them more susceptible to addiction.   The latest entry in a series of studies from Vanderbilt University’s pharmacology department shows that, when a female’s estrogen is peaking, she learns faster, craves adventure and novel experiences, is more likely to seek...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/QIl0mnUlt9A I’m Dr. Howard Smith, PENTA Medical Network,   reporting from NYC with the Health News Roundup for the THIRD week of FEBRUARY, 2019.   This is Health News You Should Use, the latest medical discoveries that you can use in a practical way to keep yourself and your family healthy.   Here are the headlines: Women’s Hormones Drive Them To Addiction   New Weed More...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/JnWj56Fbfdw Here’s some good climate news for a change.   It comes from my the goodnewsnetwork.org . NASA satellite pictures prove that our home planet is significantly greener than it was 20 years ago.   For this we can thank two coutries with the largest populations, India and China. The greening didn’t happen by accident either.   It occurred as the result of aggressiv...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/z_iV1Rri85M\          Exercise not only strengthens your heart, tones your muscles, and drives more blood flow to your brain, it also trains your fat cells to release healthy proteins into your blood that help keep your body humming.   New research from Harvard’s Joslin Diabetes Center just published in Nature Metabolism demonstrate that exercise-primed fat releases a hea...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/0N-7vPlK5xM Over the past 4 years, delayed clamping and division of the umbilical cord of preterm babies has become an internationally-accepted guideline.   The delay permits a needed autotransfusion of the baby’s own iron-rich blood from the placenta preventing neonatal anemia and facilitating better myelin production and neurologic development. Now, neonatologists at th...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/daOwdUR03kU Conventional medical wisdom states that a child’s tonsils and adenoids begin to shrink in size between the ages of 12 and 20 years.   Since these tissues, when enlarged, affect a child’s breathing, sleep, and dental alignment, the expectation that their size will diminish is key for planning medical and orthodontia therapy. A new study from the Tokyo Medical a...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/9F6t06_13j8 L-norvaline is a common amino acid component of popular body building supplements, but an Australian study just published by the journal Toxicology In Vitro shows that this compound can actually damage and kill human brain cells. L-norvaline is touted as “one of the leading methods to safely and naturally boost nitric oxide levels to new heights.”   High nitri...