Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/XBVuiU1SwvE Published on Apr 16, 2016 Tylenol can affect your reaction times and judgement. #Tylenol #acetaminophen #reactiontime #judgement

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/mY6ggkY0vBE Published on Dec 6, 2015 React to Your Baby's Babbling to foster the development of communications with your baby. #Parenting #babbling #language #infancy #communications  

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/6-EdsjAk52c Here’s some very good news.  A new study from Yale cardiology shows that the incidence of heart attacks and the rates of death from them are at 20 year lows. Following more than 4 million Medicare patients from 1995 to 2014, the investigators report a 38% decline in heart attack hospitalizations over 2 decades.  Even more impressive is the all time low 12% 30 day mortality rate after any given heart attack. This is no accident.  We as a society have been assaulting cardiovascular disease by exercising more, eating less or at least less unhealthy food, and monitoring as well as lowering our cholesterol levels. The Yalies caution us about resting on our laurels.  We should be literally heartened by our success to date but also press forward until we have eliminated all cardiac disease. Harlan M. Krumholz, Sharon-Lise T. Normand, Yun Wang. Twenty-Year Trends in Outcomes for Older Adults With Acute Myocardial Infarction in the United States. JAMA Network Open, 2019; 2 (3): e1

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Ks1j_yT6_Gs The drug dapagliflozin (DAP-AG-LI-FLOSIN), marketed as Farxiga (FAR-SIGA), which helps type 2 non-insulin dependent diabetics control their blood sugars, can help patients with heart failure as well.   The beneficial effect of Farxiga on heart failure has been known, but the new information from the international DECLARE-TIMI study is that the drug preferentially benefits those heart failure patients with a reduced ejection fraction of 45% or less, that is the sickest patients with the weakest heart pumping action. Farxiga helped these patients with the weakest hearts by reducing their need for hospitalization and their likelihood of dying from any causes by 38% and reduced their deaths from cardiovascular causes by 45%.  The drug also helped those with stronger hearts, but it only reduced their hospitalization and death rates by 12%. The drug is effective for diabetics by causing the kidneys to dump excess blood sugar into the urine and out of the body.  The drug’s abili

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/qPrjwtIsFvM Ninety percent of the most popular prescription medications in the US contain one or more ingredients that may make you sick.  Now, I’m not talking about the main or so-called active ingredient but rather about the inactive ingredients that are added to pills, capsules, and liquids to improve shelf life, absorption, and taste. A study just released by collaborators from Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MIT analyzed some 42,000 oral medications and their nearly 350,000 inactive ingredients.  The investigators pinpointed 3 troublesome inactive ingredients that appear most often.   Forty-five percent of medications contain lactose, 33% contain one or another food dye, and up to 0.1% contain peanut oil.  This latter ingredient that could be life threatening for those with peanut allergies.   To make matters worse, there are countless versions of the same prescription drug by different manufacturers that contain different inactive ingredients.  If you are an allergic

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/Od7mpmZadsA If you heard that you can avoid regular, breast squeezing mammography and still effectively screen for breast cancer using thermography, you heard incorrectly.  The FDA now repeats its warning that thermography, the use of an infrared camera to detect breast hot spots, cannot detect breast cancer at its earliest and most treatable stages. The FDA has been taking regulatory action against imaging centers, providers, and equipment manufacturers who have been misleading patients by stating that thermography is a substitute for mammography.  It is definitely not!  Over years, there has been a decline in breast cancer deaths,  That progress is in no small part due to the adoption of regular screening with mammography.  Don’t risk your life by believing that thermography will keep you safe. https://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm257499.htm #breastCA #cancer #mammography #thermography  

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/SjzjE9Wa4X4 I’m not referring to the psychedelic variety of ‘shrooms.  We’re talking more pedestrian varieties. A study from Singapore just published in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease suggests that mushrooms may be magic after all.  They seem to play a role in preventing cognitive impairment that occurs with aging and after head injury. The researchers studied and tested more than 600 Chinese seniors over a 6 year period.  They determined that consuming two portions of mushrooms on a consistent, weekly basis reduced the odds of developing mild cognitive impairment by half. Now understand that we’re talking a fair amount of mushrooms.  To reproduce the study, you would have to eat a cup and a half of mushrooms, that’s about half a plate, twice weekly over months.   The good news is you can use any edible variety mushroom including shittake, oyster, golden, or white button.  They may be canned or dried.   The investigators hypothesize that the active ingredient is ergothioneine whi

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/qlbHRISO0no Sit-stand desks, so-called SSDs, are no miracle.  This conclusion stems from a University of Pittsburgh meta-analysis of some 53 studies. The Pitt bioengineers conclude that these convertible desks do drive less sitting, can improve back pain issues, may make their users somewhat more comfortable, and can lower your blood pressure a bit.  They will not help you lose weight, and their safe use requires attention to how you are positioned such as desk height, monitor height, posture, and use of an anti-fatigue mat on which to stand. These devices aren’t cheap.  Prices range from the bare-bones model at $175 to the luxury liners with push button controls that run nearly $1000.  Before making a final purchase, you might like to try one out by purchasing from a merchant with liberal return policies. April J. Chambers, Michelle M. Robertson, Nancy A. Baker. The effect of sit-stand desks on office worker behavioral and health outcomes: A scoping review. Applied Ergonomics, 2019;

Vidcast: ttps://youtu.be/S2QmyRj51jM Wrapping a new pacemaker in an absorbable, antibiotic-soaked mesh before implantation can prevent a nasty infection later.  Cardiologists at Cleveland Clinic conducted and recently published the results of an international, multi-center study of the FDA approved Medtronic TYRX  (TRIKES) Absorbable Antibacterial Envelope. The trial enrolled nearly 7,000 patients in 25 countries each receiving a pacemaker or a defibrillator.  Half of the subjects received the antibiotic wrapper in addition to the standard prophylactic oral antibiotics.   The mesh wrappers, constructed to release the two antibiotics minocycline and rifampin over about a week, reduced the incidence of infection by 40%.  This included not only pocket infections occurring around the devices but also the incidence of endocarditis, a nasty infection of the heart’s internal lining. If you or someone your know are a candidate for an implantable pacemaker or defibrillator, ask the cardiologist about gift wrapping you

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/mot6c4dB_fQ If you’re struggling with balance problems due to an accident, an injury, or advancing age, that VR headset laying around the house or on the store shelf may just be the key to your recovery.  Balance specialists and physiotherapists at Sweden’s Lund University now report their results using a virtual reality environment to help subjects train their balance systems.  Patients with chronic balance system issues often begin to rely almost exclusively on visual input to stabilize their stance.   By repeatedly practicing stabilizing themselves on a postural stability platform while immersed in a VR roller coaster ride, the 20 experimental subjects were able to deploy the non-visual balance sensors in their muscles, joints, and ears to better reach a state of balance equilibration.   The average number of near fall events diminished 10-fold after 5 VR rides by the female subjects.  The males experienced fewer fall events overall but enjoyed a similar pattern of improvement. Th

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/pZYPwtzQhJs Is your smartphone the final authority on the best time to have sex?  Whether you want to get pregnant or avoid parenthood, the answer appears to be yes.  Georgetown University’s Institute for Reproductive Health studied one app that can help you, the DOT Fertility Tracker, in over 700 women 18 to 39 years of age for up to one year of use.   They found that careful use of the app resulted in a 1% pregnancy rate.  That’s as good or better than most forms of contraception including the pill, vaginal rings, condoms, and certainly the traditional low tech rhythm method. The app tracks a woman’s cycle and predicts the risk of pregnancy for each day of that cycle.  When a woman begins using the app, historical cycle data is applied.  As the app accumulates more personal data on her, it becomes far more accurate. If a woman consistently avoids unprotected sex on the days the DOT app predicts as fertile, she has a very cost-effective method of family planning.   As you can tell,

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/vOOwAULCFfg   Statins, in widespread use for lowering cholesterol and right-sizing the proportions of so-called good and bad fats, HDL and LDL.   Statins such as atorvastatin (Lipitor), lovastatin (Mevacor), pravastatin (Pravachol), rosuvastatin (Crestor), and simvastatin (Zocor) will save lives but all too few take them regularly as prescribed.     Utah cardiologists presented their study of nearly 5500 patients at this years spring scientific sessions of the American College of Cardiology.  The good news revealed by the data is that those patients who took their statin medications at least 80% of the time enjoyed nearly a 50% reduction in risk of suffering a heart attack, stroke, or death from any cause.  The bad news is that only 6% of the patients took their statin medications regularly.  A whopping 94% couldn’t be bothered to take these lifesaving drugs.   That statistic is just crazy!  If you are prescribed medications for your heart, breathing, or cholesterol, consider them to

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/mIwQOTwREXY A mother smoking before and during pregnancy increases the risk that her child will die unexpectedly during infancy.  Seattle Children’s Hospital pediatricians and the data jockeys at Microsoft Corporation collaborated to analyze the CDC’s infant death data covering almost 21 million births and close to 20,000 episodes of infant death. The risk of unexpected infant death skyrocketed by a factor of nearly 2.5 times with any maternal cigarette smoking, even one cigarette a day, during pregnancy.  The chance that her infant might die increased by 7% for each cigarette from 1 to 20 per day.  Even mothers who smoked within 3 months before becoming pregnant and quit once pregnant had a 47% increased chance of an infant death. This study adds the precision of huge numbers to previous investigations that have already associated maternal smoking with sudden infant death.  If you are even thinking about becoming pregnant, you and anyone with whom you live should stop smoking at lea

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/KTnE7itSwwY Sporadic over-consumption of alcohol during adolescent years leads to epigenetic alterations in the cells of brain tissue, and that modification forever damages later emotional stability.  Experiments proving this phenomenon from the University of Illinois-Chicago were just published in the journal Biological Psychiatry. Using an adolescent rat model, the scientists showed that repeated, intense exposures to alcohol early in life led to overt anxiety later in the animals’ lifespans.  Neuroanatomic studies revealed that the binge drinking led to a significant reduction of a protein ARC in the amygdala.  This missing protein was associated with a 40% reduction in critical neuronal connections.  Worse yet, stopping drinking failed to correct the deficit. The amygdala is the coordinating center for our emotions, and wiring problems in this zone will create emotional shortfalls including anxiety and depression.  This can lead to a closed loop and a downward spiral where the ef

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/s4Lxva4O0Pk Sleep deprivation will drive you to consume a wider variety of products.  Marketing researchers from the University of British Columbia’s business school draw this conclusion from several studies of buying patterns as a function of sleepiness.   Their experiments included artificial situations such as choosing candy bars on more or less sleep and a look at the consumption patterns of some 60,000 American households whose occupants lost sleep with the shift to daylight savings time.  Their shopping is quantitated in the Nielsen consumer panel data set.  I guess Nielsen watches more than our TV viewing habits. The results from the various experiments told similar stories.  We human consumers tend to crave variety when we’re tired.  It seems that the search for new products or a variety of the same product helps to stimulate our brains and keep us awake.  It’s shopping as the ultimate form of self-stimulation. It’s not rocket science to conclude that the search for variety w

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/YBZgDChW8Xg Smartphones and tablets have not reduced the 90 minutes a day that children and teens traditionally spend with other family members.  Sociologists at the British Universities of Oxford and Warwick reviewed journals from nearly 2500 children 8 to 16 years of age and journals from their parents as well.    The data shows that personal electronics actually added about 30 minutes to the amount of time the kids spent at home. This extra time, though, was not social time but rather what the scientists referred to as “alone-together” time.  You know what that is: the child is physically present but the mind is in some other galaxy or medieval castle.  So there is good and bad news from this study.  It’s good that true family time remains during meals, shared discussions, and communal TV time as long as the devices are not in everyone’s hands.  The news is bad as the the extra 30 minutes at home may be robbing our kids of true social interactions with their peers.   While some of

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/9mnVzvXuIoo Wiping a memory away requires more brain resources than retaining that thought.  Neuroscientists from the University of Texas at Austin report these findings after studying a group of adult subjects using functional MRI brain imaging to determine the levels of brain activity while attempting to either remember or forget images of people or scenes. The brain is far more active as you try to forget a memory than if you are attempting to retain it.  The act of forgetting requires your brain to very actively engage with that memory as shown by MRI activity in the prefrontal cortex control center, the ventral temporal cortex, and in the hippocampus memory bank. It is far easier to forget a scene than to wipe the memory of faces.  Images of people carry far more emotional energy.  To forget either, you shouldn’t try too hard since the studies revealed that too much attention or too little attention to the item failed to erase it. Our brains are constantly curating and prioritiz

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/oHVdoCrx_4c The poor ole egg is again under attack again.  Numerous studies over the past 30 years have declared the egg to be innocent of being an accessory before the fact when it comes to driving artery hardening, heart attacks, and strokes.  Many nutrition experts have stated that the majority of the cholesterol in our body is synthesized in the liver from the fats that we ingest.  They state that limiting your intake of saturated and trans- fats will keep your cholesterol and other lipids in control. Now a study from Northwestern University suggests that a higher cholesterol intake, 300 mg or more per day, is associated with a 17% higher risk of cardiovascular disease and an 18% higher risk of death from all causes.  The cholesterol comes in egg yolks, red meat, and high fat dairy products such as cream, cheese, and butter.   The study was a meta-analysis of 6 other studies covering nearly 30,000 adults with nearly 18 years of followup on average.  Experts reviewing the data and

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/XiP1t2R8KdA I’m Dr. Howard Smith, PENTA Medical Network,  reporting from NYC with the Health News Roundup for the 3rd week of MARCH, 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 this week’s headlines: Eggs or No Eggs: Can You Eat Them Safely? It’s Easier For Your Brain To Remember Than Forget  Digital Devices Do Not Reduce Family Time The Sleepier You Are, The More You Tend to Buy Teen Binge Drinking Permanently Damages The Brain Smoking Drives Up Risks of Sudden Unexpected Infant Death Statins Do Prevent Heart Attacks.....If You Take Them Fertility App DOT Works As Well As The Pill Virtual Reality Helps Fine Tune Your Balance An Antibiotic Wrapper Prevents Pacemaker Infections Are Sit-Stand Desks Really Good For You? Mushrooms May Help Prevent Those Senior Moments FDA Warns That Thermography Is Not Effective Breast Cancer Screening  You May Be Allergic To Your Pills

Vidcast: https://youtu.be/q71bhoFuam4 Here are the headlines for this weeks stories: Toxins At Home And In Food Can Make You Sterile Raw Dog Food Contains Dangerous Bacteria Mediterranean Diet Turbocharges You In Just Days Young Women Need Better Lipid Screening Childbirth In the 50s Can Be As Safe As In The 40s Pregnancy Infections May Trigger Autism and Depression Vaping Triggers Heart Attacks and Strokes Bosses Who Bully Kill Their Own Bottom Lines Environmental Music Synchronizes Everyone’s Brainwaves New Immunotherapy For Advanced Breast Cancer Snoring And Sleep Apnea Linked to Young Athletes’ Sudden Death Napping Controls Blood Pressure Infants Distinguish Family From Strangers By Laughter Hookah Smoking Is Even More Dangerous Than Cigarettes TRY A LITTLE KINDNESS: Checkout Guy Fulfills Special Needs Child’s Dream   For more information#you’ll find all the references for the stories and a copy of show notes on my website at: https://www.drhowardsmith.com/mar-2019-1st-week-health-news