dr. nancy snyderman reports there is a new message for players, coaches and parents. >> that a boy!> reporter: head football coach rodney webb remembers taking a hit as a high school football player. >> we referred to it as having your bell rung. i had my bell rung several times. >> reporter: the mantra back then -- no pain, no gain, and no talk of concussions. a policy he's changing for his kids now. >> oftentimes, kids don't want to admit they have a concussion. we have some rough and tumble football players that want to think that they're superheroes. >> a concussion is not visible. it's something on the inside of your head. it's something you have to try and explain. during the time you're injured you really can't explain it. >> reporter: mesquite high school is one of the first in texas to have a comprehensive concussion policy. students take a baseline neurological test at the beginning of the season and after any impact. they are tested and retested repeatedly, and can only be cleared by a trainer -- not a coach. and now the nfl is stepping in. for the first time there will b

dr. nancy snyderman. >> i just call him a miracle all the time. they all said they never heard like that happening before. >> reporter: in march after three days of labor kate and david ogg had premature twins -- a girl, emily, and a boy, jamie. born at just 27 weeks, both babies were struggling to breathe, but it looked like jamie wasn't going to make it. >> it is the worst feeling i have ever felt. >> reporter: expecting the worst, the nurse laid jamie on his mother's warm, bare chest, the grief-stricken couple trying to say good-bye. >> i was just devastated. >> reporter: as the couple cuddled the two-pound baby, he started gasping -- a reflex doctors told them to expect. >> almost as soon as the last person left the room he startled, which is the first movement i felt of his arms and legs. i was like, oh, my god, what's going on? >> reporter: in this video, taken by a midwife, jamie began to slowly move, twisting, turning, even grasping kate's hand. how could a baby in such critical condition suddenly be so responsive? >> what's important, it'

dr. nancy snyderman is here with that. nancy, welcome. >> reporter: before katrina rolled through there were 39 hospitals in the area. only 24 remain today. as the area rebuilds, some people believe less is, in fact, more. >> nice to see you. >> reporter: isaac walter was born at charity hospital 64 years ago and got a lifetime of health care within its walls. >> it was a long wait once you got there. it was crowded, crowded, crowded. >> reporter: already overwhelmed by new orleans' poorest, charity was flooded after hurricane katrina when the levees broke. and overnight, the largest safety net for the uninsured was out of business. >> my family was sick. we had nowhere to go. >> reporter: katrina forced the medical community in new orleans to transform its health care system from the large hospital walk-in care to many smaller neighborhood centers. a network of 87 independent primary care clinics funded with federal, state and private money. >> about one in five people in our city is using a neighborhood-based health care

dr. nancy snyderman is nbc's chief medical officer and a head and neck surgeon. first of all, he is a friend and a friend of this show, unexpected news. when we hear that he is going to undergo chemotherapy and radiation, what does it tell us about the kind of tumors that doctors suspect he has? >> that it is a cancer. benign tumors don't get treated like this. standard treatment for throat cancer, and we have to remember throat cancer can mean a lot of different things. tonsil, tongue, voice box, but that prolonged treatment over that period of time without talking about surgery means either it's inaccessible or it's beyond that and they're going to try to shrink it and do surgery later. chemo and radiation means they're concerned about the size or the advancement of it. >> we talked to him a few times, and he seemed fine. can something develop that quickly? >> most likely the tumor was there and it may not have been noticed. the warning most likely, even if they didn't recognize the signs, something was there a few months ago. >> i know it's different patient t

dr. nancy snyderman is nbc's chief medical editor.d morning. >> hi, matt. >> this has been anecdotally talked about. you called it almost an urban my myth. now we have a randomized controlled clinical style. what did it show? >> right. this is now science saying the urban myth is true that if you drink two glasses of water before a meal, you will consume 75 to 90 fewer calories during that meal. >> it's not about boosting metabolism. >> it has nothing to do with metabolism. it has to do with making your tummy feel full so you consume less. some got water, some didn't. those who consumed the water over a 12-week period lost five pounds more and seemed to keep it off. >> this is good news. you say it's because it tends to make you feel full. there's a second part of this, if you're busy drinking all of this water you're probably not going to have time to drink the sweetened drinks that have so many calories. >> i think that's really important. they looked atwater and the idea is water, makes your stomach expand, makes you feel full and

dr. nancy snyderman is nbc's chief medical editor. nancys, good morning to both of you.last night and i'll read it again in a second, i haven't heard of most of these things. is that one of the problems? >> well, it is for the ones that are not well known because one problem is if you go on the internet to research them you're probably not going to come across too many cautionary stories. >> let's read the list here. this is the dirty dozen. aconite, bitter orange, chaparral, colloidal silver, coltsfoot, comfrey, country mallow, germanium, greater celandine, kava, lobelia and yohimbe. what jumps out at you, nancy? >> the biggest thing is you haven't heard of many of them. that's the concern. a lot of things people just look at the promises. it takes away your sniffles and causes more muscles, makes you feel better. unless you read the nuanced ingredients you might not run upon these. rely on your doctor and pharmacist for everything may be a pitfall because a lot of times physicians don't know enough about this. >> are we saying there are side effects from some of these?

dr. nancy snyderman, good morning to you. >> hi. >> one in five, 20% of adolescents.erious. >> i think this is for real and it is serious. what teenagers forget and we forgot, too, at rock concerts is once you damage the nerve of hearing, it is so fragile you cannot operate or give a medicine for. this is permanent damage. the mp-3 or ipod generation, it's easy to ramp up the sound beyond what you conceive of as dangerous and the damage can be serious. >> researchers didn't look into the reasons behind the hearing loss but you are suggesting it's the mp-3s among other things. >> they raised the question, well, what could it be? i will take the stance that i don't think it's genetics. i don't think there is suddenly a change in the human animal over ten years that can explain it. what can explain it is the technology that once upon a time you put earbuds in or put on headphones and you could hear the person next to you. now there is really no bleed of the music. so it goes right against your eardrum, right into your middle ear, inner ear into the brain and the acoustic