Dr. Steve: Thursday

Do you have a question for Dr. Steve, CLICK HERE

7:00am Segment Info:
Here's a diet lots of people are going to love how about pizza and eggs! According to health magazine you can actually lose weight on a diet that includes 5 bad foods.

Like red meat, ice cream eggs, pizza and bacon, but of course there's a catch. The red meat has to be very low in fat, like 97 percent lean. Eggs are truly good for you. The risk of cholesterol can be lowered by using only one yolk to every 3 egg whites. Pizza's ok as long as it's whole wheat with lots of veggies and little cheese, and as for bacon only Canadian bacon will do. It has a third less fat than traditional bacon.

What about ice cream?

The idea behind the ice cream is that you want to satisfy yourself every once in a while dairy can be good for you and has been shown help lose weight, but you really have to go with the low fat kind and keep your portions under control. It's for the occasional splurge.

In other news, there's some new report about autism.

With the use of special brain imaging scans, researchers on long island have discovered that children diagnosed with autism have more gray matter in their brains than healthy children...

And that excess gray matter may make it harder for autistic children to learn how to function socially by watching other people's behaviors,. In contrast, increased gray matter among healthy children correlated with higher IQ. The increase in gray matter affects the action of special "mirror" brain cells that help you mirror an action or behavior when you see someone do something. They allow us to learn without knowing we are actually learning and then respond appropriately.

Can this help doctors diagnose autism?

There were gray matter abnormalities throughout the brain, but particularly in the parietal lobe, which adds to previous research suggesting that mirror neurons found in that region play a key role in autism. Unfortunately, this new imaging technique can't be used to diagnose autism. There are many different possible causes of autism, which means many different brain abnormalities. Right now researchers are trying to identify one common mechanism. If they can do that they can better diagnose and treat the condition.

Finally there's some important news for women with breast cancer.

There's a new type of mammography that's cutting the rate of false positive tests. It's called stereoscopic digital mammography and it uses 3-d images to help find cancers that may otherwise have been missed. A five-year study looked at almost 1,100 and found the technique reduced false-positives by 49 percent. Stereoscopic digital mammography is also much better at picking up cluster calcifications that are associated with malignancy.

What about women with dense breast tissue?

This technology also allows radiologists to get a picture of the entire breast volume in a slice-by-slice view.

So detecting problems in dense breasts is not an issue because it doesn't look as dense, because tissue is being spread out in depth. Some experts say stereo mammography does show promise, but more work is needed... And they're calling it a step in the right direction. Certainly if it can help cut back on false positive tests it would decrease the number of unnecessary biopsies which can be painful and stressful for women.

8:00am Segment Info:
The smoking boom of the 50's 60's and 70's is finally catching up with women. Doctors are diagnosing more cases of C.O.P.D.,or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease among women. It's a progressive illness that permanently damages the lungs, and it's usually caused by smoking. It's now become a major killer in women causing the death rate to nearly triple from 1980 to 2000, and since 2000, more women than men have died or been hospitalized every year because of the disease.

What exactly is C.O.P.D.?

You probably know it as two diseases, emphysema and chronic bronchitis.

Emphysema destroys air sacs deep in the lungs; and chronic bronchitis causes inflammation, congestion and scarring in the airways. About 12 million Americans are known to have it, including many who have quit smoking. You can tell C.O.P.D.-ers a mile away. They're the ones who can't climb half a flight of stairs without getting winded, they have a constant smoker's cough or they need an oxygen tank to walk down the street. I always tell smokers. You may not get cancer, but you're very likely to get C.O.P.D.

Speaking of lung problems, there's bad news for children that were near ground zero.

Scientists say children exposed to the dust around the collapsed world trade center after nine-eleven are more likely to have asthma than other children.

New findings by the city health department reflect similar studies on asthma in people affected by the tragedy. It's estimated that half of the 31-hundred children enrolled in the world trade center health registry developed at least one new or worsened respiratory symptom between the attacks and their interviews in 2003 and 2004.

And finally, there's more good news for red wine drinkers.

That toast for your health may actually help fight diabetes; a new study says red wine may offer health benefits for diabetics.

Researchers have discovered new compounds in red wine that mimic the anti-aging chemical Res-Vveratrol. They say it may offer new ways to fight type-2 diabetes and other age-related diseases. Res-Veratrol has already been proven to prolong life in mice.