Dr. Howard Smith Reports

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...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/o5aew8kkWGM Take out meals, just like sit-down restaurant offerings, are way too large with way too many calories.   A British fish n’ chip wholesale supplier cooperated with academic nutritionists at Newcastle University to design what they call the Lite-BITE® box carry out box as part of a UK national campaign to fight obesity. The usual fish and chip take out meal cloc...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/wG0PHbEeh70 Eyeing that 10 layer chocolate cake or mile high apple pie before you select your main and side dishes will help you make a   more nutritious choice.   So says a study from the University of Arizona’s marketing department just published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology:Applied . Dining subjects   were presented with either a luscious lemon cheesecake...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/DMRmeoFeVUg We know all about the dangers of second-hand smoke, those clouds of toxic fumes emanating from cigarettes, cigars, and pipe bowls.   Now a study from the University of Cincinatti and the Cincinatti Children’s Hospital hone in on the vapors that waft up from those yellow stains on walls, ceilings, carpets, upholstery and, yes, the fingers of smokers themselves....

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/fM3zWSu7ZAA Alcohol abuse is rampant in teens and young adults, and hospitals are reporting an epidemic of premature chronic liver disease and failure in millenials.   A new study from the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Center for Alcohol Research in Epigenetics now shows that binge drinking prevents development of normal connections in the developing brain’s amygdal...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/0CezKXdha_o Electronic cigarette use is on the upswing, and their makers trumpet the latest studies showing that e-cigs help current tobacco smokers kick the habit.   In actuality, as older smokers quit more teens use e-cigs and move on to the nasty and dangerous habit that is tobacco cigarette smoking. Besides the addicting nicotine, the e-cigs vaporize and spew a raft o...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/VyMYFtxNodM First we had tennis elbow, more recently football CTE dementia, and now we have golfer’s wrenched back.   The latest study in the Joural of Neurosurgery:Spine sounds an alarm for golfers to ease up on their swings a bit. Over the past 40 years, competitive pressure has driven the golf swing to become more and more powerful.   Golfers now seek strength training...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Q0cF8rNJvN0 Those compounded creams and gels you buy to rub on your aching muscles and joints may be worthless to you for relieving pain.   They are worth gold to the hucksters who manufacture and market them to the tune of at least 6 million dollars a day. Pain specialists at Johns Hopkins and the Walter Reed Hospital studied nearly 400 subjects with 3 types of pain: 1....

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/anJEys3Soc8 I’ve presented many studies proving that fruits and vegetables in your diet will keep you strong, fit, and physically healthy.   Now, new data from Great Britain’s University of Leeds shows that these key dietary components also boost your mental capacities. The researchers studied some 40,000 persons and report that those consuming more fruits and vegetables...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/CA0GVw_xvUI No one likes the prospect of surgery.   If you’ve been diagnosed with an ovarian cyst and your doctors have recommended removal, a new study suggests that an operation may not be necessary for every cyst. Ovarian cysts are little balloon-like bumps that arise on the surface of the ovaries.   They are discovered with ultrasound scans when abdominal pain or bloa...

Howard G. Smith, MD, PENTA Medical Network, reports from NYC with the Health News Roundup for the SECOND week of FEBRUARY, 2019. Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/BMHHclF3DPo 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. Besides that, there are two stories about Health Crap You Should Scrap: some non-prescr...