Dr. Howard Smith Reports

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs8HvYyPggq/ Breathing with prolonged exhalation beats other breathing techniques as well as mindless meditation for elevating your mood and extinguishing anxiety.  Stanford University neurobiologists and psychologists studied 108 persons with a mean age of 28 years.  Two-thirds were females. Four techniques were tested by each of 4 groups for 5 minutes each d...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/Cs8GGuyNZm8/ Suffering a head injury more than doubles your risk of dying at some time over a 30 year period.  So say University of Pennsylvania neurologists who followed 13,037 adults, median age of 54, between 1987 and 2019.   Head injuries were experienced by 18% of the group.  The risk of death for this cohort was 2 twice that of the non-injured group.  Th...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskhGo4NJeX/ Lead-in by the late Gary LaPierre Dr. Smith reports a Medical Minute about the dangers of leaving children and pets in locked cars. https://journalistsresource.org/health/child-dead-left-hot-car-research/ #children #parenting #heat #fever #cars #wbznewsradio 

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CskfeeZtH9b/ Dr. Smith discusses a caller’s throat problems that are reducing the quality of her singing. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30843435/ #singing #larynx #vocalcords #nodules #polyps #phonomicrosurgery

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskeZ7wuvF2/ Dr. Smith warns listeners no to confuse tiny bottles containing eye drops with those containing instant glue. https://www.livescience.com/woman-glues-eye-shut.html #eyes #eyedrops #glue #krazyglue #instantglue #wbznewsradio

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskdctYPTPR/ Adding just one hour of TV or cell use each day bumps teen sugar and caffeine intake beyond World Health Organization guidelines.  Pediatricians at Canada’s McMaster University studied more than 32,000 US students from 8th through 10th grade. The additional hour of TV bumped the risk of exceeding WHO sugar guidelines by 32% and caffeine guidelines...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskcVX-rULB/ A happy tune is THE secret to unmasking solutions to your dilemmas as you get some ZZZs.  This remarkable discovery comes to us from Northwestern University psychologists. Investigators tested 57 subjects presenting them with tricky puzzles the evening before sleep. Each puzzle was accompanied by a unique sound.  Then, as they slept, they heard the...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskbcfBricJ/ Endurance running with a resistance band connecting your shoes can increase your running efficiency by over 9%.  Mechanical engineers at UC-Santa Barbara clocked runners with and without latex surgical tubing connecting their feet. The tubing stores kinetic energy as the legs move past one another, and that energy helps power the next cycle.  The r...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/Cskaj4EMPHG/ It’s not just the football team that gets overheated.  The marching band, wearing heavy wool uniforms, is particularly susceptible to heat-related disease.  This according to an analysis by investigators at the Universities of Georgia, South Carolina, and Kansas that looked at this problem over a 31 year period using a newspaper report database. Of...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskZv57Lxxt/ Those taking the antidepressant drug fluoxetine, branded as Prozac, have a significantly reduced risk of developing progressive age-related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in those over the age of 50.  Researchers at the University of Virginia analyzed data from two health insurance databases covering more than 100 million pers...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskYsIsP8hG/ Drinking a 6 ounce cup of coffee during the first trimester will not increase a woman’s risk of gestational diabetes and drinking that same amount during the second trimester actually seems protective lowering the risk of diabetes by 47%.  University of Pennsylvania and NIH epidemiologists just published these conclusions following their study of 2...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskXmbuPh9R/ Initiating physical therapy, PT for short,  before or after knee replacement therapy significantly reduces that chances that a person will require long-term opioid pain therapy by some 25 to 29 percent.  Boston University researchers studied 67,322 persons who underwent total knee replacement surgery over a 20 year period. Beginning PT either befor...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskWr30JGz8/ Women who elect to freeze their eggs in their 20s or early 30s are more than twice as likely to later become pregnant and more than 3.5 times more likely to deliver a baby when compared with women who use IVF techniques.  NYU gynecologists studied 543 patients who froze their eggs and compared their pregnancy success with controls who began using I...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskV2RTpk5P/ University of Colorado kidney specialist Dr. Richard Johnson has studied this phenomenon and give us the blueprint for understanding how it works.  Lots of salt and little water, and sometimes caffeine rich soda, dehydrates our bodies.  That dehydration, in turn, stimulates the production of the sugar fructose from the carbs and starches we eat.  T...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskU-3VPkzV/ The two professional societies whose members recommend and perform bariatric surgery now announce their first modifications in the indications for such surgery in more than 30 years.  The 1991 recommendations from The American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery and the International Federation for the Surgery of Obesity and Metabolic Disor...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CskT_ApMnRh/ Strokes don’t occur often in young adults, but having Type A blood increases your risk of having a debilitating early onset stroke 16% while having type O blood reduces that risk by 12%.  Epidemiologists at the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine draw these conclusions from their meta-analysis of 16,927 stroke victims who participated in 48...

Vidcast: https://www.instagram.com/p/CsTAqHVMtQA/ A WBZ Radio caller asks Dr. Smith about her “clicking” knee joints. https://centenoschultz.com/symptom/knee-clicking/ #knee #clicking #cartilage #meniscus #kneecap #patella #wbznewsradio

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS_qKEMkbk/ Dr. Smith and Peggy Keating, Duke University exercise physiologist speak with a WBZ Radio caller about using exercise to help manager depression. https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/depression/in-depth/depression-and-exercise/art-20046495 #depression #exercise #aerobics #endorphins #anxiety #wbznewsradio 

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS-sHIPGFj/ We all must screen for colon cancer.   New data suggests that  you might be able to use a simple chemical test at home to replace that nasty bowel prep followed by either colonoscopy under anesthesia or a CT scan.   A meta-analysis by Indiana University of some 31 studies testing more than 120,000 persons shows that the so called FIT test, the fec...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS-sHIPGFj/ The strains of holding down a job and maintaining social relationships increases a woman’s risk of developing heart disease by 21%.  Public health scientists at Philadelphia’s Drexel University report this and other conclusions following their study of 80,825 postmenopausal women over nearly a quarter century. Relationship stress including a spous...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS80wipVCf/ Thiazide blood pressure drugs including hydrochlorthazide can bump up the risk of deadly skin cancer by 60%.  This the conclusion from a University of Toronto study comparing 302,634 adults on hypertensive medications and 605, 268 unmedicated matched controls.  Increasing doses of thiazide medications were associated with increasing incidence of m...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS7-_oryhv/ Women with heart attack symptoms are significantly less likely than men to receive timely therapy.  This the conclusion of an NYU study just presented at the American College of Cardiology’s spring scientific sessions. Though women with chest pain arrived at the ED as quickly as men, they were less likely to be triaged as first priority emergencie...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS7IwFJATL/ Young women consuming more than two servings a day of sugar-sweetened drinks more than double their risk (2.2) of bowel cancer.  Public health researchers at St. Louis’ Washington University issue this warning after comparing the dietary records of 95,464 women participating in the Nurses’ Health Study. The cancer risk escalates 16% for every extr...

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS4QMwNlT_/ You’ve no doubt heard that pomegranates are chock full of fiber, vitamins, minerals, and those cancer-killing antioxidants.  A Scottish study now adds appetite-suppression to the pomegranate’s beneficial powers. Twenty-eight subjects with a mean age of 35 years were randomized to receive a 3 week priming course of pomegranate extract or a placebo....

Vidcast:  https://www.instagram.com/p/CsS3dsoLn9g/ Daily exposure to blue light each morning significantly improves Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms.  University of Arizona psychiatrists report these findings following their study of 82 PTSD sufferers. All study participants committed to a daily 30 minute light treatment continued over a 6 week period.  The treatment group of 43 were expose...