Wire Health & Medical

An estimated 3.5 million cancer patients around the globe are in severe pain from their disease, but many get no relief.

Over the last decade, the nation's war on obesity has targeted some fairly obvious culprits, including fast food, pastries, fried foods and soda.

What if you spent a week eating the right diet, exercising and stimulating your brain with fun-to-do mind games?

Last week's column on nitrates and nitrites generated some questions from readers.

His loved ones dreaded what might be next: a diagnosis of Alzheimer's.

This is a confusing time for parents who are chauffeurs to not only their children but also their children's friends. Children are passing along all kinds of legal information to one another about booster seats.

At Meghan's Place Eating Disorder Center in Modesto, Calif., clients used purses and shoes to make art that helped them explore their ideas about body image and their sense of self.

A powerful health advisory agency says Britain should extend free fertility treatments to women up to age 42 as well as same-sex couples, recommendations likely to be followed by many of the U.K.'s medical centers.

Healthy men shouldn't get routine prostate cancer screenings, says updated advice from a government panel that found the PSA blood tests do more harm than good.

If you want to see what women's health care in America will be like if Mitt Romney becomes president, just look at Texas and Arizona.

A simple "pull-to-sit" test on infants at six months old may help doctors predict autism and other delays, a new study has found.

A simple, cheaper exam of just the lower part of the bowel can cut the risk of developing colon cancer or dying of the disease, a large federal study finds.

Half the nation's overweight teens have unhealthy blood pressure, cholesterol or blood sugar levels that put them at risk for future heart attacks and other cardiac problems, new federal research says.

New lung cancer screening guidelines from three medical groups recommend annual scans but only for an older group of current or former heavy smokers.

I'm one of those women who likes reading men's health and fitness magazines. Though they all promise bodies and sex lives that most of us will never have, I'm drawn to the funny, self-deprecating tone, the functional workout tips and the emphasis on sweat, competition and strength training.

The Institute of Medicine, which offers advice to the government on health issues, released a 478-page report last week that evaluated the "obesogenic" nature of our nation.

In most developed countries, children with autism are usually sent to school where they get special education classes. But in France, they are more often sent to a psychiatrist where they get talk therapy meant for people with psychological or emotional problems.

The stories of marathon runners collapsing and dying at the finish line are enough to scare anybody thinking of participating in one of the 26.2 mile races popular around this time of year.

Two new government studies show young people are still putting themselves at risk for skin cancer by getting sunburned and going to indoor tanning beds.

A woman said to me, "You say one thing about nutrition. Other people say something else. It makes me just want to pull a towel over my head and forget about it all."

Around the globe, the leading cause of death for children younger than 5 is pneumonia, according to a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

For the first time, the government is proposing that all baby boomers get tested for hepatitis C.

Eighty-eight-year-old Stella Mazur took eight medications a day for conditions that ranged from high blood pressure to seizures, but she was frustrated because she couldn't keep all of her pills straight.

The name alone sounds so encouraging: HDL, the "good cholesterol." The more of it in your blood, the lower your risk of heart disease. So bringing up HDL levels has got to be good for health.

Dropping a paper prescription at the drugstore is becoming old-school: More than a third of the nation's prescriptions now are electronic, according to the latest count.

The Obama administration is asking a presidential commission to help decide an ethical quandary: Should the anthrax vaccine and other treatments being stockpiled in case of a bioterror attack be tested in children?

For the first time in 20 years, U.S. health officials have lowered the threshold for lead poisoning in young children.

In a clinical trial that could lead to treatments that prevent Alzheimer's disease, people who are genetically guaranteed to suffer from the disease years from now – but who do not yet have any symptoms – for the first time will be given a drug intended to stop them from developing it, federal officials announced Tuesday.

One of life's simple pleasures just got a little sweeter. After years of waffling research on coffee and health, even some fear that java might raise the risk of heart disease, a big study finds the opposite: Coffee drinkers are a little more likely to live longer. Regular or decaf doesn't matter.

Look for a fundamental shift in how scientists hunt ways to ward off the devastation of Alzheimer's disease - by testing possible therapies in people who don't yet show many symptoms, before too much of the brain is destroyed.

Coffee seems to be good for you. Or at least it's not bad, say researchers who led the largest-ever study of coffee and health.

Babies can be good yoga partners. Just ask the folks at Pacific Cultural Center's Ashtanga Yoga Institute.

An antibiotic widely used for bronchitis and other common infections seems to increase chances for sudden deadly heart problems, a rare but surprising risk found in a 14-year study.

Look for a fundamental shift in how scientists hunt ways to ward off the devastation of Alzheimer's disease - by testing possible therapies in people who don't yet show many symptoms, before too much of the brain is destroyed.

Five years ago, on a muggy August morning in Hicksville, N.Y., Ann Kornhauser was out walking her golden retriever when bones in her left foot suddenly cracked. Kornhauser, then in her late 50s, soon learned why: Doctors discovered a rare tumor in her foot. They amputated half of it.

Alzheimer's disease is a growing threat as the population gets older. Already, more than 5 million Americans have the mind-destroying disease. Barring some research breakthroughs, up to 16 million may have it by 2050. The first National Alzheimer's Plan, adopted Tuesday, aims to slow that threat - and to help the families already suffering along the way.

Aimee Copeland, a Georgia grad student, is fighting for her life because of the flesh-eating bacteria that infected her after she gashed her leg in a river two weeks ago. One of her legs was amputated and her fingers will be too, her father says, because of the spreading infection.

One in 3 young adults with autism have no paid job experience, college or technical schooling nearly seven years after high school graduation, a study finds. That's a poorer showing than those with other disabilities including those who are mentally disabled, the researchers said.

No golfer likes it when a shot lands in a sand trap, but Jeff Robinson used to get particularly distraught when it happened. Having struggled with sore knees for two decades, just navigating the small descent into a bunker was excruciating.