Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/_dGkTXmj3Y0 Good news is good for your soul, and here’s a feel-good saga from my favorite good news website, goodnewsnetwork.org .   Twelve years ago during cool weather John Sumner, saw a pathetic seagull with an obviously broken leg attempting to land and get food.   He and his dog had come to the beach for a walk, and John offered the seagull some of his pet’s dog bisc...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/X6ZxecLbkxI Medical marijuana is now legal in 33 of 50 states, and most users look to weed as medicine in order to relieve chronic pain.   Investigators from the University of Michigan reviewed data from state registries and found that more than 800,000 persons are licensed medical cannabis users.   This number likely underestimates the actual number of users. Cannabis is...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/zOaEiNnJBCY Driven entrepreneurs and students often steal needed hours of sleep to find extra time.   A collaborative study by business researchers coordinated by Oregon State University shows that, when sleep is limited, mindfulness can come to the rescue and turbocharge your ailing brain.   Studying more than sleep-deprived 400 entrepreneurs across the US, the researche...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/cpb2nP4vYF0 An unexpected observation during a patient’s awake neurosurgery confirms that laughter leads to a sense of calm and happiness.   Surgeons at Emory University in Atlanta relate this fascinating, whimsical tale. A young patient with difficult to control epilepsy was undergoing awake neurosurgery to pinpoint the seizure focus.   During the surgery, the surgeons i...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/3vsdF9Re_g8 Another thumbs up for aerobic exercise comes from the University of Buffalo’s Concussion Management Clinic.   They check in with the first randomized study of recovery from adolescent sport-related concussions comparing carefully calibrated exercise with the usually recommended near total rest or slow stretching. The investigators studied 103 athletes, 13 to 1...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/0e6_N7YbgPg Thousands of young women are having unnecessary radiation exposure via mammograms prior to surgery to right-size their breasts.   A just published University of Michigan study of more than 52,000 women candidates for this surgery shows that one-third of them had mammography prior to the procedure. The American Society of Plastic Surgeons stated 5 years ago tha...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/z_dp6Ogts8c An effective but reversible male contraceptive has been an elusive goal for the past century since Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger coined the term “birth control.”   Chinese bioengineers using the latest nanotechnology report a unique sperm tube blocking parfait that may just do the trick.   They tested the concept in a rat model. To prevent sperm f...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/gnwupAEH4h8   A new Brazilian study shows that Vitamin D is key in promoting insulin sensitivity and lowering blood glucose.   Normal blood sugar levels prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes, the type controllable by diet and medication rather than insulin.   Now here’s the “rest of the story” as the great Paul Harvey once intoned.   Although the US Preventive Services cou...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/OPm5-Fb5wRU Exercising regularly not only tones your muscles but also the executive control center in your brain.   This is the conclusion of a study by Columbia University neurologists. They studied 132 couch potatos of all ages and split them into two groups each with an identical age profile, gender distribution, educational background, and test scores on cognitive exa...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/V0dPokY1Bxs If you get a rotten night’s sleep, your brain will be primed for a painful day after.   Neuroscientists from UC-Berkeley now prove this fact with two studies: one in the laboratory with sophisticated studies of the next day’s brain electrical activity and the other via crowdsourcing with subjects reporting their feelings after a restless night. In the first st...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/3nvp1LiIzso Looking for a little warmth this winter.   Finnish and British scientists urge you to spend some time in the sauna and not only warm up but enjoy substantial health benefits. Their report in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings demonstrates that regular sauna use reduces your blood pressure and risk of cardiovascular disease, improves lung function, energizes your immu...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/KU4orDr9WjM The time is here when many are toning their bodies looking ahead to those warm summer days on the beach. When you join a group to lose weight, know that the information you receive about how your group is doing can encourage or discourage your efforts. Yale and McGill University psychologists studied data from an anonymous US-based weight loss company with clo...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/qleohPgM234 If you smoked or ate some weed over the weekend, will you flunk that pop drug test your boss springs on you Monday morning?   The answer depends on how much you consumed and the type of test you must take.   Either way, be forewarned that marijuana’s psychoactive agent, THC, is fat-soluble and definitely hangs around in your body longer than alcohol. Smoking o...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/LmzLL69mBUI Repetition is the key to controlling your brain, forming positive habits, and erasing self-destructive behaviors.   Psychologists from Britain’s University of Warwick collaborated with colleagues at Princeton and Brown Universities to create and study a digital mouse model that reveals the secrets of our brains’ habitual and goal-directed controllers. In the e...

Health News RoundUp-1st Week of February, 2019 2/7/19 Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/YpmA6bS43IM   I’m Dr. Howard Smith, PENTA Medical Network,   reporting from NYC with the Health News Roundup for the FIRST 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 headline...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Bmf-1znzk94 Don’t rush your newborn into the baby tub if you want immediate breastfeeding success.   A study from the Cleveland Clinic’s obstetric unit shows that delaying the traditional post-delivery dunk by 12 hours significantly increases a new mom’s chances of exclusively breastfeeding her baby. The obstetric nurses leading the study conjecture that the warmth and hi...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/Z3xovlAR4Cg The pop music in the soundtracks of Americans’ lives has become more sad and more angry over the past 7 decades.   Musicologists at the University of Michigan now report this conclusion from their computerized sentiment analysis of more than 6,000 songs on Billboard’s Top 100 from the 1950s through 2018.   Angry lyrics increased yearly except from 1982-84 an...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/_W3hoDgJfP0 Another goal for the #metoo movement is suggested by the latest study from Yale psychologists.   As research subjects observed a video of the very same child being subjected to the classic, old fashioned medical torture, the fingerstick, but identified as either Samuel or Samantha, the majority of observers, both men and women, believe that the girl Samantha f...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Lb0OYyB-6P4 School violence is on the rise but, surprise, it’s the bullies themselves who are most likely to be seriously injured.   This the conclusion of a study by researchers at the University of Texas-Houston who studied of some 4300 5th, 7th, and 10th graders in Houston, LA, and Birmingham, Alabama. In 5th grade, 17% of children sustained at least one violent injury...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/rfr_xGLijiQ You may have heard about the ketogenic diet controversy.   Some including the popular fitness expert and Biggest Loser consultant Jillian Michaels insist that this high fat, low carb diet dangerously robs you of critical macronutrients including blood sugar. To fact check Michaels’ conclusion, a scientific analysis of the ketogenic diet by University of Alabam...

Vidcast:   https://youtu.be/fhEZX0VLIEs Cancer of the esophagus is so often asymptomatic that it it kills almost a half million persons around the world before they know what hit them.   From Johns Hopkins now comes a simple, non-invasive test that can diagnose this cancer early without the need for a formal endoscopic procedure. The test, called the EsophaCap, is a dissolvable capsule containing...

VidCast: https://youtu.be/ANgt3DTv5rE Women suffering preeclampsia during their pregnancies have a 30% higher risk of later stroke.   Columbia University neurologists studied 84,000 California teachers and found that low dose aspirin at least 3 times weekly virtually erases the greater risk of stroke for women before they reach the age of 60.   Once past 60, aspirin’s protective effect vanishes. P...

Vidcast : https://youtu.be/olxRebs_d5M We doctors constantly repeat it and you constantly hear it: avoid all but healthy food during pregnancy.   Despite this mantra, nearly one-third of pregnant women believe that cannabis is safe for their developing babies. The analysis by Canadian doctors of 6 US studies shows that, as years go by, more pregnant women are using marijuana.   Currently, at least...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Gu_bP7t1WyA Muscular development during our younger years provides the building blocks for strength maintenance as we age.   This the conclusion of a literature review from UMass-Amherst.   Biology professor Lawrence Schwartz reminds us that, during the first decades of our lives, our muscles not only grow in size but generate more and more cell nuclei, the local brains o...

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/8pv8A-fRs78 Most of our brain’s horsepower, so called general cognitive ability or GCA, develops early in life.   An international team led by those at UC-San Diego now report that 99% of our intellectual abilities measurable at age 62 have already developed by age 20.   Said another way, the higher education, job challenges, and various intellectual pursuits that we purs...