Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

  xvid https://youtu.be/vV1J4sIPyy0   Paying creatives for every idea they churn out led to optimal results.  The alternatives, paying for idea quality or offering no motivational reward at all, fell flat according to studies by business school researchers at The University of Texas-Austin and the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign.   Their data also demonstrated the most interesting finding that true creativity has an incubation period.  The greatest creative productivity occurred when the idea kids spewed out rough ideas, took at least a 20 minute break, and then returned to their initial thoughts and refined them into very practical plans.   The bottom line?  When you need creative solutions throw as many ideas up on the board as you can, and don’t be cheap about paying the brainstormers or yourself.  Then go out for a walk and return to fine-tune the initial ideas many minutes or days later.   Steven J. Kachelmeier, Laura W. Wang and Michael G. Williamson. Incentivizing the Creative Process: From Ini

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/VLC_LDRCHwI   If you’re overweight and suffering from migraine headaches, dropping those extra pounds will literally take a load off your mind.  This conclusion comes from a new study by Italy’s University of Padova recently presented to the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society.   Researchers there conducted a meta-analysis of 10 studies covering more 473 migraine sufferers.  They found that any weight loss in obese subjects led to significant improvement including fewer migraines, shorter and less intense headache spells, and less disability.   The improvement did not depend upon the degree of obesity, the numbers of pounds lost, or how subjects achieved the weight reduction.  Dieting and surgery both worked, and the effects were similar in adults and children.   If you’re popping pills, getting shots, having psychotherapy, using biofeedback, enjoying therapeutic massages, getting acupunctured, or wolfing down exotic herbs all to prevent or control your migraines and you are o

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/wGewmy9_u90   A green light over the salad bar and a red light over the burgers and fries triggers healthier and environmentally more responsible food choices.  Experimental psychologists at London’s Queen Mary University set up a lunchtime canteen and studied the choices of over 400 subjects.   They conducted two experiments.  In the first, one group of subjects saw traffic signals over the food reflecting its caloric content and healthfulness.  In the second experiment, two traffic signals were present: one again representing the health rating of the food; the second signal revealed the environmental friendliness and carbon emission quotient of the food.  The control groups saw no lights.   Even though the investigators presupposed that multiple lights would be confusing, the group choosing food while exposed to the one signal for calorie count but also the group exposed to indicators for both calories and carbon emissions choose healthier options.  The bonus was that the group

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/uttUY1yfe9Q   Playing organized team sports grows the hippocampus, the brain’s emotion and memory center, while reducing the incidence of adult depression.  This is the finding by neuroscientists at the Washington University-St. Louis.     They studied a nationwide sample over over 4000 children 9 to 11 years of age using questionnaires to determine their participation in sports and their emotional outlook.  Each underwent MRI brain imaging to measure their hippocampal volumes.    Participation in regular, organized team sports but not casual pickup games or non-sport activities such as music or art triggers hippocampal growth in both boys and girls.  The sports-playing boys but not the girls showed a notably reduced incidence of clinical depression later in life.   The authors caution that this observation is merely an association and not proof of cause and effect.  Even so, it underscores the value of participation in after-school athletics as long as they don’t trigger head inj

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/OxOPYMo9fdk   The knee takes a beating in many athletic contests, and anterior cruciate ligament repair is a frequent operative event in the world of sports medicine.  During recovery, though, there tends to be a loss of muscle mass and bone density despite good rehabilitation therapy.   Orthopedic surgeons at Houston’s Methodist Hospital report to the American Orthopedic Society for Sports Medicine that precise and cyclic limitation of blood flow to the healing limbs during postoperative rehabilitation exercises reduced if not eliminated the loss of both muscle and bone mass.  An automated tourniquet was used to reduce the blood flow by about 80% on an intermittent basis.   Researchers across the country and around the world are now studying this phenomenon to better understand the underlying reasons for the benefit.  If you are contemplating an ACL repair, ask your orthopod about this tourniquet technique.   American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine. "Blood flow restricti

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/rU2V0Knw6ZE   Pregnant women will suffer colds and may get the flu despite receiving the flu vaccines.  When that occurs, the babies they are carrying are more likely to develop excessive neural sensitivity.  That in turn leads to agitation for infants and toddlers and attention deficits and even serious psychosis such as schizophrenia later in life.   A study by University of Colorado pediatricians and psychiatrists reveals that this problem may be prevented by sufficient levels of the essential B vitamin choline.  Choline is necessary for the synthesis of the cell membranes of neurons and the sheaths of nerves.   While choline is found in some foods including eggs, red meat, and liver, 75% of pregnant women fail to consume the recommended daily 450 milligrams of this nutrient.  Unfortunately, prenatal vitamins do not contain choline.   Pregnant women should take a 500 mg choline supplement daily for at least the first 16 weeks of pregnancy.  Choline may be obtained from most dru

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/o7vWyfz-n7w   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 Ergono

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/yPUzPyQOAVw   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 a

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/5PFjaUwlKzQ   We can neutralize our stress and anxiety with song, a stuffed animal, and even another person.  Psychologists at Yale and Cornell present this stress antidote adding that a safety signal triggers an entirely different neural network than that through which behavioral therapy operates.   Subjects, both human and mice, were exposed to both threatening objects and non-threatening ones separately.  Including the non-threatening safety item in a threatening scenario neutralized the stress.   With the holidays upon us soon to be followed by the tax season, I’d pick a safety signal, a portable happy place, to help you through the anxiety maze.  Know you’re not alone: 1 in 3 Americans have disabling anxiety and fear.   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191209161336.htm    #Safetysignal #Fear #anxiety #happyplace  

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/XZ5zruOCTWI   Australians, forever known as industrial strength meat eaters, have found a way to continue their habit while still eating heart healthy.  Enter the Mediterranean-Pork diet.     It fuses the typical med diet of fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains and olive oils with 2-3 weekly servings of fresh lean pork,  Research at the University of South Australia shows that participants following the Med-Pork plan actually have higher cognitive function than those on a typical low-fat offering.   The bonus: producing pork versus beef generates significantly fewer greenhouse gases.   It’s time to import this tasty, healthy diet to the US.  Mix up a delicious salad, and put the other white meat, pork, on the barbie.   Alexandra T. Wade, Courtney R. Davis, Kathryn A. Dyer, Jonathan M. Hodgson, Richard J. Woodman, Hannah A. D. Keage, Karen J. Murphy. A Mediterranean Diet with Fresh, Lean Pork Improves Processing Speed and Mood: Cognitive Findings from the MedPork Ran

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/qzPedk35i7g   Eating red meat and fatty foods will more than triple your risk of going blind over time. So says a collaborative University of Buffalo-University of Wisconsin study just published in the British Journal of Ophthalmology.   The investigators reviewed the dietary preferences of 144 patients with various stages of macular degeneration.  Those consuming a typical western diet of red meat, fried foods, refined grains, and high-fat dairy were 3.4 times more likely to develop advanced eye disease with the inability to continue driving.    A poor diet not only damages your heart and blood vessels but also critical sense organs like eyes on which you depend for a quality life.  Begin eating healthy today.   Shruti Dighe, Jiwei Zhao, Lyn Steffen, J A Mares, Stacy M Meuer, Barbara E K Klein, Ronald Klein, Amy E Millen. Diet patterns and the incidence of age-related macular degeneration in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study. British Journal of Ophthalmology, 2

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/tBJw-6SRtGk   Drummers develop simplified connections between the two halves of their brain and more efficiently organized motor control zones.  A German study just published in the journal Brain and Behavior draws these conclusions from their MRI studies of 20 professional drummers with close to 177,000 hours of drumming under their sticks.   The drummers compared with non-musicians had fewer but thicker fibers in the corpus callosum that connects both sides of the brain. The drummer’s brains displayed less electrical activity while playing due to better wiring efficiency.   It would appear that time with a drum kit might be excellent training for anyone aspiring to perform complicated hand motions.  Aspiring painters, sculptors and surgeons take note.   Lara Schlaffke, Sarah Friedrich, Martin Tegenthoff, Onur Güntürkün, Erhan Genç, Sebastian Ocklenburg. Boom Chack Boom—A multimethod investigation of motor inhibition in professional drummers. Brain and Behavior, 2019; DOI: 10.100

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/p1I6x7NGREA   Midwife-directed childbirth in a warm water-filled bathtub instead of a bed are just as safe and result in fewer vaginal tears and episiotomies.  University of Michigan obstetric nurses derive these conclusions from their comparison of 397 water births with over 2000 land births.   Those infants born in water were no more likely to require NICU admissions.  Post-delivery bleeding rates were the same for both groups.   Despite widespread use abroad, few American facilities support water birthing.  The woman may labor in a bathtub, but she is moved to a bed for delivery.     The Michigan nurses hope water birthing will spread.  It is safe, effective, and studies are underway to assess maternal satisfaction.   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191210111659.htm   #Waterbirthing #episiotomy #vaginaltears.  

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/dwCg-YKSBuk   Different brain regions activate when you see justifiable assaults versus gratuitous brutality.  University of Pennsylvania neuroscientists recruited 26 college students to view 90 second movie scenes depicting defensible violence from Taken and White House Down but also unwarranted strong-arming from Skyfall, and Jack Reacher.  Brain activity was studied by MRI.   Forceful actions in defense of family and friends trigger activity in the brain’s prefrontal center that labels such activity moral.  Violence without redeeming qualities stimulates the lateral frontal cortex and labels the actions unacceptable.   Our brains know right from wrong due to family guidance.  Sadly many in high federal office never experienced such discipline.  We but also they will suffer the consequences.   Azeez Adebimpe, Danielle S. Bassett, Patrick E. Jamieson, Daniel Romer. Intersubject Synchronization of Late Adolescent Brain Responses to Violent Movies: A Virtue-Ethics Approach. Frontie

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/prrcksSUdOU   Viral colds can’t be cured.  Nose blowing makes them worse, but my ABCDE program can keep them under a week without triggering bacterial sinus or chest infections.   A stands for taking an Anti-inflammatory such as Advil or aspirin that reduces pain and congestion.  B is for achieving Bacterial control and eliminating crusts with nasal application of triple antibiotic ointment,.  C stands for nasal Cleansing with saline aerosol spray to improve breathing by clearing mucus and bacteria.  Do each 4 times a day: 8a-12n-4p-8p.   If needed, add a D for Decongestant up to twice a day.  Use oral Sudafed or Afrin nasal spray but only up to 5 days.  E is for exit using Mucinex DM to curb that hacking cough and Flonase nasal spray to stop lingering nasal drip.   Don’t suffer....use your ABCDEs for that cold.   https://www.drhowardsmith.com/treating-colds   #Colds #sinusitis #bronchitis #advil #aspirin  #saline #Flonase #MucinexDM  

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/srussDWNdZU   Playing sports enhances your brain’s ability to process environmental sounds and eliminate background noise.  Neuroscientists at Northwestern University report this finding after studying nearly 500 student-athletes and matched controls.   Delivering speech through earbuds and recording participants’ brain waves, researchers discovered playing collegiate sports enhances a player’s ability to extract meaningful speech from their environment by effectively suppressing background noise.  In contrast, other research shows that the brains of musicians and multi-lingual individuals amplify meaningful sounds rather than suppressing background noise.   Hearing better is yet another reason to be physically active.  The trick is to play non-contact sports like tennis, volleyball, and track that pose no risk to your brain’s overall physical health.   Jennifer Krizman, Tory Lindley, Silvia Bonacina, Danielle Colegrove, Travis White-Schwoch, Nina Kraus. Play Sports for a Quieter

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/LbrAqKFbud8   A huge Harvard study definitively associates symptoms of gastrointestinal reflux disease with the ingestion of caffeinated beverages and soda.  Participating were more than 48,000 women in the Nurses’ Health Study who had no diagnosed gastrointestinal reflux disease.   Analyzing data from nearly 263,000 person-years of follow up, regular coffee drinkers were 34% more likely to experience reflux symptoms, regular tea drinkers 26% more likely, and regular soda drinkers 29% more likely.  Milk, water, and juice produced no such discomfort.   This is the first study to categorically prove an association between some of our favorite drinks and heartburn.  If you do develop reflux symptoms, don’t ignore them as chronic irritation of the esophagus breeds cancer.     Mehta, Raaj S. et al.  Association Between Beverage Intake and Incidence of Gastroesophageal Reflux Symptoms.  Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology: http://bit.ly/2Pt5Bie   #Gerd #reflux #coffee #tea #soda  

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/pE42m2UaxVI   Feeling loved escalates your feelings of self-worth and optimism to the highest levels.  Penn State psychologists studied 212 participants by smartphone polling their self-assessments of being loved and feeling happy or sad.   Phone surveys appeared randomly 6 times a day over a 4 week period.  They explored love in the broadest sense not restricting it to romantic love but including general, positive connections with friends and family.  A sense of loving and being loved had a strong association with happiness, positivity, and overall well-being.   Since love and caring are reciprocal, use your own smartphone as well as in-person communications to give and receive both.  You and those you know will be glad.   Zita Oravecz, Jessica Dirsmith, Saeideh Heshmati, Joachim Vandekerckhove, Timothy R. Brick. Psychological well-being and personality traits are associated with experiencing love in everyday life. Personality and Individual Differences, 2020; 153: 109620 DOI: 10

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/WCVwKnueXMg   Women sleeping 5 hours a night or less were 94% more likely to have whole body osteoporosis compared with those sleeping at least 7 hours.  A study of more than 11,000 postmenopausal women participating in the Women’s Health Initiative was just published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.   The investigation compared self-reported sleep duration with x-ray determined bone mineral densities of the whole body, hip, and spine.  Those short on sleep were 63% more likely to have hip osteoporosis and 28% more likely to have spine osteoporosis.   In this largest study of its kind, sleep proves to be a critical factor for maintaining strong, healthy bones throughout life.  Make sure you get enough!   Ochs‐Balcom, H.M., Hovey, K.M., Andrews, C., Cauley, J.A., Hale, L., Li, W., Bea, J.W., Sarto, G.E., Stefanick, M.L., Stone, K.L., Watts, N.B., Zaslavsky, O. and Wactawski‐Wende, J. (2019), Short Sleep Is Associated With Low Bone Mineral Density and Osteoporosis in the

  Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/gYEb98stl-8   More pregnant women turn to their own mothers than their doctors or self-help books for advice during pregnancy and child-rearing pointers later.  This from a University of Cincinnati study of  64 pregnant women and 23 almost grandmothers.   Though self-help guidebooks provide solid, factual information, they also tend to create a generational disconnect by dismissing the value of practical information from a woman’s mother.  Both generations of women endorsd the value of professional medical advice for matters pertaining to testing, diet, medications, and vaccinations, but many women comment that their professionals need to listen to them more and talk less.   Navigating pregnancy and parenthood successfully requires many resources.  Use them all….selectively and critically.   Danielle Bessett. Complicating the Generational Disconnect: Pregnant Women, Grandmothers-to-be, and Medicalization. Reproduction, Health, and Medicine, 2019 DOI: 10.1108/S1057-6290201900000200