Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/W9pIH4Cq7zc Half of the millions using the most common type of sleeping pills might never wake to escape a fire.   Taken to induce sleep and relaxation, the popular benzodiazepine medications or benzos for short include Restoril, Halcion, Ativan, Xanax, and Valium.   This class of drugs induces drowsiness but also suppresses emergency arousal.   Even newer drugs such as A...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/BdkFM7lAJ7Q Eating fiber-rich foods and whole grains rather than fast food carbs will prolong your healthy life.   A meta-analysis of 135 million person-years of data, completed in New Zealand, was just published in The Lancet. The highest consumption of dietary fiber and whole grains led to a 15-30% reduction in deaths from all causes, in the incidence and deaths from he...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/BfUxLso3b5I Restricting childrens’ sedentary screen time in favor of more physically active pursuits is the latest weapon in the war against childhood obesity.   New Canadian research just published in the journal BMC Obesity reminds us that parenting practices are key factors in their offsprings’ screen time. Nearly 40 families with at least one child 18 monthS to 5 year...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/seKiQCg_VEw Excess abdominal fat, particularly visceral fat around the bowels that creates a pear-shaped belly, can substantially raise your risk of heart disease even more than just being overweight or obese.   A new study published in the journal Neurology now associates pear-shaped bellies with smaller brains.   The study reviewed over 9600 middle aged people and looke...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/cdG-7SCuuSk Women experiencing serious post-menopausal symptoms including hot flashes and flushing are frequently prescribed hormone replacement therapy (HRT).   One uncommon but life-threatening risk associated with this therapy is venous thromboembolism, the formation of blood clots in leg or other veins that can travel up into the heart and lungs or beyond. British epi...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/BXJr5-3AZ80 Terrifying flashbacks and horrifying visual memories are suffered by those with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).   German and Swedish researchers now publish data in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology that demonstrates suppression of these hallucinations by playing   Tetris. Their studies showed that 75% of those who played Tetris while ex...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/Xue5gu5TAe8   Everyone assumes that Vitamin supplements in reasonable quantities are safe and beneficial.   Investigators at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital now show that for Vitamin E and cancer that assumption is dead wrong.   The word dead is significant.   The enzyme that controls how the body uses Vitamin E comes in 3 genetic variants.   It turns out that wome...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/WIVM5wcPtQA   Fasting intermittently while on restricted intake was the most effective path to weight loss for the obese.   That’s the result of Australia’s Adelaide University’s study of 88 overweight or obese women on controlled diets over a 10 week period.   The data showed that those who ate only 70% of their normal caloric requirement and fasted for 3 non-consecutive...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/aoeVuKJMH8U   Doctors who regularly prescribe marijuana have some practical advice for you, and I’ll pass it on.   The Annals of Internal Medicine solicited this information and here are the pearls: AS A PAIN MED:   not the first thing to try;   if you try begin with low doses, avoid smoking it in favor of edibles and topicals; begin with CBD (cannabidiol) rather than the...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/yRHTi8fPcow To remain happy in the mainstream of life, check your hearing.   Researchers in Columbia’s ENT department studied over 5,000 New Yorkers with hearing tests but also screening for depression.   They found that even a mild hearing loss doubles your chances for depression. If you have a severe hearing loss, you are 4 times more likely to be depressed. Almost ever...

Hearing Loss Fuels Depression 10 Things To Know About Marijuana Starve Your Appetite For Better Weight Loss This Vitamin Can Kill You…Or Save You Which Video Game Cancels Post-Traumatic Stress Safest Medicine For Menopausal Hormone Replacement Bad Eating Shrinks Your Brain Monkey See Monkey Do When It Comes To Screen Time Eating Good Carbs is Lifesaving The Wrong Sleeping Pill Can Burn You TRY A L...

An 80 pound, 11 year old immigrant boy saved a 34 year old man twice his weight from drowning in a Minnesota apartment swimming pool when no other swimmers were around.     Advaik Nandikotkur, an Indian boy only 3 years in this country, was at the pool with his parents, both non-swimmers, when another apartment resident began drowning.   His father was unable to reach the panicked man with a flota...

If you’re a regular user of the pinks, blues, yellows, and greens, the non-sugar sweeteners, a study just published in the British Medical Journal now reveals that these products will not help you lose weight.   Scientists at Germany’s University of Freiberg conducted a Cochrane review of 56 individual studies and found no convincing statistical evidence that use of fake sugar leads to weight loss...

If you’re taking an antibiotic with “FLOXACIN” in its name, listen up.   The FDA wants you to know that the drug can weaken the walls of your aorta leading to deadly ruptures.   The fluoroquinolone antibiotics including ciprofloxacin (Cipro), levofloxacin (Levaquin), ofloxacin (Floxin), and moxifloxacin (Avelox) and a few others have been around for more than 30 years, and they can be invaluable f...

Unpredictable income can be deadly, and that reality is all too common in today’s so-called gig economy.   A collaborative study from the Universities of Miami, Minnesota, California at San Francisco, Northwestern, and Massachusetts of nearly 400 persons 23 to 35 years of age was launched in 1990, and the subjects were monitored for 25 years.   Those relatively young persons without steady jobs an...

Repeated miscarriages, that is 3 pregnancy losses in a row each before 20 weeks of gestation, are usually thought to be due to maternal factors including uterine defects, infection, hormonal imbalances, and autoimmune disease.   A study from Imperial College, London, now suggests that flawed sperm may also play a key role in some miscarriages.   After analyzing the sperm of 50 men whose partners e...

Obsessive, compulsive symptoms (OCS) in adolescents and young adults may be a sign of serious mental illness including major depression and suicidal intent.   A study at the University of Pennsylvania looked at 7,000 subjects 11 through 21 years of age and found that 20% of those with OCS had thoughts about harming themselves or others and pictured violent images.   Psychiatrists know that such ch...

Campaigns by Medicare to reduce patient readmissions to a hospital within a month following discharge, the so-called Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program, is associated with more patient deaths from heart failure and pneumonia rather than improvement in care quality.   This is the conclusion of a study of some 8 million hospitalizations over a decade beginning in 2005 was completed and recently...

Celiac disease may be initiated by an agent used to improve food texture and to literally glue together meat fragments into a more substantial, steak-like product.   The agent is microbial transglutaminase, and a review of data about the causation of celiac diease just published in Frontiers in Pediatrics suggests that the increasing amounts of this substance that are finding their way into our fo...

Women’s who suffer from chronic peri- and post-menopausal hot flashes and night sweats, so called vasomotor symptoms or VMS, lasting close to 10 years or longer have a 13% higher risk of developing breast cancer.   This the conclusion of a Women’s Health Initiative analysis of more than 25,000 women 50 years of age and older who never had any menopausal hormone therapy and who were followed for a...

Ever hear of prescription digital medicine?   Who ever heard of doctors and other therapists prescribing the playing of therapeutic video games? Well that is now a reality for children with autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and it may soon be used for other patients as well.   Pediatricians at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Autism Research...

Metabolic syndrome is a nasty group of problems that might kill you but certainly will make your life miserable.   If you have any 3 of these 5 issues, namely central obesity or a body like a pear, high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar, high blood triglycerides, or low high density lipoproteins, then you’ve got metabolic syndrome.   Metabolic syndrome is accompanied by excess body oxidation an...

Vitamin C prevents Metabolic Syndrome HEALTHtech: DIGITAL MEDICINE HELPS KIDS WITH AUTISM/ADHD   PERSISTENT HOT FLASHES ASSOCIATED WITH RISK OF BREAST CANCER A common FOOD ADDITIVE MAY TRIGGER CELIAC DISEASE HOSPITAL READMISSION REDUCTION CAMPAIGNS KILL PATIENTS OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE TEENS LIKELY HAVE MAJOR PSYCHIATRIC ILLNESS REPEAT MISCARRIAGES MAY BE DUE TO DEFECTIVE SPERM FLUCTUATING INCOME ASS...

Meet Travis Trent, a brand new father in Tacoma Washington.   He’s just going to the parking lot after the birth of his baby.   Opening the vehicle, he notices a burning smell and sees smoke wafting out of the dashboard.   Thinking quickly and knowing that most would have advised him to abandon the car and get out of the garage before the car lights up, he instead quickly drives it out of the gara...

Hopefully you or someone you love will never require a limb amputation.   One of the chief side effects of losing an arm or leg is so-called phantom limb pain, and it occurs in some 75% of amputees.   This is a painful sensation that seems to be coming from the portion of the limb that is no longer there.   Reconstructive surgeons at Ohio State now announce a fix for this problem, and its called t...