CNN – Health

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN You can learn a lot from a search history. This month, Google released its annual “Year in Search” list to show which terms saw the highest spikes over the past year. The roundup offers some insight into what internet users around the world cared about, were curious about and concerned about

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN The table is set, friends and family draw near, and you already know what comments or questions are going to come your way. Maybe the remarks are about food, your weight, money, relationships, career or kids — whatever the topic may be, the position you’re in isn’t unusual. For many people,

By Sarah Lazarus, CNN One day in July 2021, my then 15-year-old daughter Poppy stumbled and fell while walking down some stairs, grazing her knee. It wasn’t a serious wound, but over the weeks it didn’t heal. Around the same time, her wrists and knees became sore; her ankles started rolling when she walked; her

By Elizabeth Cohen, Naomi Thomas and Nadia Kounang, CNN Jill Hartle might seem an unlikely advocate for abortion rights, but after a devastating pregnancy loss, she’s raising her voice. A conservative Christian and former Ms. South Carolina, Jill was a Republican until last summer, when in the wake of new abortion restrictions in her state,

By Brenda Goodman, CNN Target stores are recalling more than 200,000 weighted blankets for children that have been sold by the retailer from December 2018 through September 2022. The Pillowfort brand blankets can trap children inside if they unzip them and enter the blanket, posing a risk of suffocation. Two girls, ages 4 and 6,

By Brenda Goodman, CNN Influenza is continuing its early and severe rampage through the United States, but there’s some hopeful news for flu seasons of the future. In a significant step, researchers recently said they’ve been able to immunize animals against all 20 known influenza A and B virus strains, marking an important step toward

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Life expectancy in the United States dropped for the second consecutive year in 2021, falling to the lowest it has been since 1996, according to final mortality data published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. Covid-19 was a major contributor to the

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN Brook was 34 years old when her use of alcohol escalated, a way of coping with a breast cancer diagnosis. “I just decided I’m not gonna go through this straight,” she told Lisa Lang in an episode of “This Is Life With Lisa Ling,” airing at 9 p.m. ET Sunday on

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN A flu season that hit the United States early and hard is showing the first signs of slowing in parts of the country. For the first time this season, flu hospitalizations have dropped week-over-week. The week after Thanksgiving was the season’s worst yet, but data published Friday by the US Centers

By Brenda Goodman, CNN Although the updated Covid-19 vaccines don’t offer complete protection against a trip to the hospital or urgent care, they do offer important defense against the virus, particularly for seniors, two new studies show. “Both studies show that there’s quite an important benefit from the bivalent booster that it’s adding quite a

By Melanie Radzicki McManus, CNN There are more than 600 muscles in the human body, and it’s impossible to strengthen each and every one. Yet there are plenty whose power you can enhance, and doing so is key to enjoying a healthy, active life. Strong muscles help combat diabetes, boost cardiovascular, musculoskeletal and mental health,

By Jen Christensen, CNN Just when you thought it was safe for a holiday visit with your Auntie Mary and her fragile health, RSV and the flu reared their heads — and now Covid-19 numbers are creeping up again. Health officials are emphasizing the availability of the protective measures, tests and treatments that they say

By Nadia Kounang, CNN A new study finds that nearly 6% of the estimated 130 million people who go to US emergency rooms every year are misdiagnosed, which translates to about 1 in 18 patients getting the wrong diagnosis. The report, published Thursday by the US Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare

By Jen Christensen, CNN Humans weren’t the only ones that lost their lives after being exposed to an aromatherapy spray linked to fatal cases of a rare tropical disease. The disease also killed a family’s pet raccoon in Texas. Exposure to a room spray containing “gemstones” that was sold at Walmart last year led to

By Martha Shade, CNN Meira Va’a Nelson is a champion surfer who has known more trauma in her life than most people will ever experience. When she was just seven years old her mother died of breast cancer. On the day of her mother’s funeral, her father, unable to deal with his own grief, left

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Drug overdose deaths in the United States have slowed in recent months after reaching record levels earlier this year. New data published Wednesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that 107,735 people died of a drug overdose in the 12-month period ending in July. That’s about 2,500

By Jen Christensen, CNN Long Covid leaves some people with long-term symptoms, but it can be deadly, too. It played a part in at least 3,544 deaths in the United States in the first 30 months of the Covid-19 pandemic, a new report says. The report is the first official attempt by the US Centers

By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN An experimental personalized mRNA vaccine in combination with the immunotherapy Keytruda reduced the risk of recurrence or death from melanoma in patients who had already had surgery, Moderna and Merck said Tuesday. The randomized trial included 157 patients with stage 3 or stage 4 melanoma who had already had surgery. Some

By Jen Christensen, CNN The Covid-19 vaccines have kept more than 18.5 million people in the US out of the hospital and saved more than 3.2 million lives, a new study says — and that estimate is most likely a conservative one, the researchers say. The US is nearing the second anniversary of its first

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN Ever since they met in the fifth grade, Bob Pettit said his wife has always been the life of the party, a social butterfly and a caring mother. Now, in what doctors say are the final stages of her Alzheimer’s disease, Betty Pettit has found new ways to share the love

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Flu surged in the United States after Thanksgiving, bringing the most severe week yet in a season that hit the county extra early. More than a third of all flu hospitalizations and deaths so far this season were reported in just the past week, and cases also jumped nearly as much.

By Brenda Goodman and Raenu Charles, CNN Grant’s Pass Pharmacy in southern Oregon is down to its last few boxes of children’s acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and pharmacist Michele Belcher says she can’t order more. Belcher says she orders these medications from one of the “big three” wholesalers: McKesson, Cardinal Health and AmerisourceBergen. When she checked

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN Months after most mask requirements have come to an end and many people have stopped wearing them, some of the nation’s leading health experts are encouraging people to put their face masks back on — but this time, it’s not just because of Covid-19. As a triple threat of respiratory illnesses

By Judith Graham, Kaiser Health News It wasn’t the Thanksgiving holiday any of us had expected. Two weeks before, my 94-year-old father-in-law, Melvin Zax, suffered a stroke after receiving dialysis and was rushed to a hospital near his residence in western New York. There, he underwent a series of tests over the course of several

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN Colon cancer has claimed another life. Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner Kirstie Alley, best known for her roles in the television sitcoms “Cheers” and “Veronica’s Closet,” died Monday at age 71 after battling cancer that was “recently discovered,” according to a family statement. A representative for Alley confirmed to CNN

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN More than 1,200 pregnant and postpartum women died of a drug overdose in the US in 2020, with overdoses involved in more than 1 in 6 pregnancy-associated deaths that year, according to a new study. Drug overdose deaths reached record levels nationwide during the Covid-19 pandemic, and research published Tuesday suggests