Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8crYzgz37/ 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, energi...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8bgX5gerM/ Ninety percent of video gamers are not addicted to the sport.  This conclusion stems from a Brigham Young University study of 385 teens over a 6 year period. Those who were obsessed with gaming, pursing the sport to the detriment of healthy functioning, had a definite profile.  The vidicts I’ll call them tended to be male with higher than average...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq8adkhAJwQ/ Does tapping, humming, slurping, and loud chewing drive you nuts?  You may have misophonia that is a real disorder with real differences in your brain wiring. For years, many professionals doubted  the existence of this problem.   Then, after study by groups in Australia and the UK over the past decade, the annoyance by repetitive sounds has been...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7YOoiruyt/   Cornell neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Mosconi has identified brain and body differences between the two genders.  Parade magazine encapsulated her findings this past weekend.   Women: See doctors more often Benefit more from plant-based diets Have greater risks of dementia Experience more anxiety and depression Suffer more headaches and migraines  Hav...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7XWqlL6PJ/ Brain tissue exposed to explosive shockwaves suffer a 60-80% decline in proteins necessary to maintain working connections and information flow between brain cells.  Neuroscientists at the University of North Carolina collaborated with colleagues at the US Army Research Laboratory to test the effects of select battle shockwave trauma on hippocampa...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7WeOvvKLG/ Consuming foods rich in the monosaturated fat oleic acid could prevent the autoimmune attack on your central nervous system that triggers MS.  This the conclusion of a Yale University study.   The immunobiologists found that fat tissues of MS patients were deficient in oleic acid.  When they added it back to the fat in the test tube, they found it...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7VhzLMO4N/ Being overweight but also underweight boosts a woman’s risk of suffering recurrent pregnancy losses by 20%.  British obstetricians performed a focused meta-analysis of 16 published studies covering nearly 66,000 women.   Repeated miscarriages are 21% more likely in women with BMI’s >25 than those with normal body weight.  In those with repeated...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7UgbcLSY4/ The debate about egg safety continues.  Some say that ingesting cholesterol-rich eggs plugs your blood vessels while others insist that the dangerous cholesterol is manufactured in your own body due to saturated fat intake.   A huge Chinese study using the American NIH-AARP database looked at more than 521,000 persons reporting their dietary choic...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7SmdLtfBz/ Exploding cigars are an old prank, but e-cigarette explosions aren’t funny and can be devastating to an increasing number of teens.  University of Utah surgeons combed the case records for 9 children’s hospitals looking for e-cigarette-related injuries during the years 2016 through 2019.   A total of 15 children 13 to 18 years were injured.  Ten r...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7RMIxpwIB/ Taking a daily cocoa supplement may reduce your chance of dying from cardiovascular disease by 27%.  Preventive medicine investigators at Harvard’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital conducted a randomized, double-blind placebo controlled study in which 420 persons took a commercially available cocoa extract supplement each day for 3.6 years.  Each of t...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7Pwwss9CX/ Women who smoke consistently from 14 weeks before conception to 10 weeks after it carry fetuses that are consistently underweight and are born with a notable weight deficit.  Dutch researchers studied 689 pregnant women between 2010 and 2018 and compared the babies carried by the smokers with the non-smokers.   Those who smoked a half-pack a day o...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq7N1J7gD4e/ A child’s level of dislike for a given food rather than how much the child likes that food is a better predictor of consumption at any given meal.  Penn State nutritionists studied 61 children 4 to 6 years of age who were asked to rate the 7 foods presented to them on a meal tray: chicken nuggets, grapes, potato chips, cherry tomatoes, broccoli, k...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cq31GOIvydl/ Two-thirds of Americans don’t know that drinking alcohol increases their cancer risk. This from a National Cancer Institute survey of 3,865 adults statistically representative of nearly 254 million Americans.   Looking at the details, nearly 80% are unaware that wine poses a risk, 75% don’t know that beer poses a cancer danger, and 69% are unaware...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlxV2QMvcJ/ Dr. Smith gives his WBZ Radio listeners a tip regarding the do-it-yourself Heimlich-type maneuver that actually preceded Heimlich’s report.  The Flake Maneuver was developed by Boston Children's Hospital ENT specialist Carlyle Flake MD. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1987-10-04-8703150357-story.html #choking #flakemaneuver #heimlic...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqlv6CwJEMx/ Lead-in by WBZ’s Gary LaPierre Dr. Smith reports on his WBZ Medical Minute the sad New England Journal posting about a young man who swallowed a toothpick with ultimately fatal consequences. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17457300.2021.1930059?journalCode=nics20 #toothpick #bowels #eyes #perforation 

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqluJoPL-zs/ Dr. Smith takes a WBZ Radio on-air call from the mother of a 6 year old with recurrent ear infections and persistent middle ear fluid.  They discuss a medical approach than can prevent the need for tube surgery. https://www.drhowardsmith.com/book #earinfections #earfluid #otitis #serousotitis #eartubes #wbznewsradio

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqltDI9ML0A/ The Lyme Disease season begins in April and peaks in the summer.  On his WBZ Radio program Dr. Howard Smith OnCall he provides an Early Bird Special about Lyme disease and what you need to know to protect yourself.  Get the excellent online CDC Lyme disease pamphlet at: http://bitly.ws/CtXw #lyme #ticks #rash #arthritis #cardiac #wbznewsradio

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlsBw2LUL9/ Stocky, young athletes often experience disordered sleep snd breathing patterns that could predispose them to heart attack and sudden death.  Exercise scientists from Japan’s Showa University explored this situation by studying 42 male rugby players 18-19 years of age.   After formal sleep studies were completed, 43% of the players experienced sig...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlrKbLOWAu/ Wearing a weighted vest for just 3 weeks could help you lose 5 times more weight.  A new study from Sweden’s University of Gothenberg studied weight loss in 69 mildly obese subjects. The experimental group wore 24 pound vests while the control group wore 2 lb vests over the study period.  The weigh-in at the end clocked a 3.5 pound average weight...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlqMNYtF48/ Those who tend to be anxious have a 6th sense superpower that effectively protects them from danger.  A new study from Caltech’s cognitive neuroscience department shows that anxious individuals more effectively flee from subtle dangers. The study participants were challenged with a series of virtual reality threats characterized as slow that are i...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlpXagJLR5/ Women with these vasomotor symptoms or VMS are 70% more likely to suffer heart attacks or strokes over time.  Epidemiologists at Australia’s University of Queenland just published this warning after their meta-analysis of 23,365 women. The risk of adverse cardiovascular consequences rises with severity of hot flushes and night sweats but not with...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqloQolNZsw/ If your child has a tonsillectomy, don’t use ibuprofen, Motrin or Advil, to control post-operative pain.  A study from Harvard’s Boston Children’s Hospital shows that these drugs increase the risk of bleeding following tonsillectomy by 36%. The study analyzed more than one-half million children under 18 years who underwent tonsil removal between 2...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlnXeBPkY_/ Concussion, dementia, and sleep deprivation produce similar changes to your brain’s architecture as determined by a novel MRI imaging analysis.  Oregon investigators now present data from their study of 56 Afghanistan war vets and suggest possible therapeutic approaches to TBI and dementia. Their imaging data shows a correlation between battle bra...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CqlmmkoN8Bd/ Exercising during your off-hours can reduce your chances of death by as much as 40%.  Ironically, though, high physical exertion at work actually increases your death risk by 27%.  Danish researchers present these conclusions after studying the mortality data from a cohort of 104,046 Danes and tabulating it with self-reported physical activity dur...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqll0nvsVSx/ Barring US teens 14 to 17 years of age from using indoor tanning facilities would prevent more than 18,401 melanoma cases and save $205 million healthcare dollars.  This from a microsimulation study just published in the journal Cancer. Banning tanning bed use for the 17.1 million US minors would prevent 15,101 primary melanoma cases and 3,299 pote...