CNN – Health

By Dana Santas, CNN Many high performers across sports, business and the arts will tell you they swear by their intuitive sense. It allows them to make decisions, often in a split second, without overthinking and missing opportunities. Look at baseball players. With the average fastball in Major League Baseball pitched at speeds greater than

By Jen Christensen and Raenu Charles, CNN When Amber Sizemore and her family went out of state to celebrate her birthday last week, she had hoped her toddler daughter, Raegan, would try swimming. But the 15-month-old, normally energetic and adventurous, wasn’t herself on Saturday. “She hated it, and she normally loves water,” Sizemore said. By

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN Two researchers are urging health-care providers to educate and screen pregnant women about intimate partner violence, as women in the United States are more likely to be murdered during pregnancy or postpartum than to die of common obstetric causes such as high blood pressure, hemorrhage or sepsis. Other research suggests that

By Katia Hetter, CNN Last week, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued guidance recommending the updated Covid-19 booster for children ages 5 to 11. Previously, the bivalent booster was recommended for children 12 and older, as well as for all adults. Now, the Pfizer/BioNTech booster is available for children 5 and older,

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Covid-19 vaccines will be part of recommended immunization schedules in 2023 for both children and adults, after a unanimous vote by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s independent Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. That doesn’t make the vaccines mandatory for anyone, a point that was emphasized in a discussion

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN Many more survivors of sexual assault are seeking emergency medical care, but still represent a fraction of all assaults reported to law enforcement. In 2019, emergency department visits for sexual assault were 15 times higher than they were in 2006, according to a study published Thursday in JAMA Network Open. Overall

By Chris Boyette and Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN A surge in respiratory illnesses among children is beginning to put a strain on hospitals. In particular, hospitals are seeing a rise in cases of respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, a common cold virus that can be associated with severe disease in young children and older adults. Cases

By Brenda Goodman, CNN A flurry of new Covid-19 variants appears to be gaining traction globally, raising fears of a winter surge. In the United States, these are BQ.1, BQ.1.1, BF.7, BA.4.6, BA.2.75 and BA.2.75.2. In other countries, the recombinant variant XBB has been rising quickly and appears to be fueling a new wave of

By Katherine Dillinger, CNN Abbott Nutrition plans to build a $500 million nutrition facility for specialty and metabolic infant formulas, Chairman and CEO Robert Ford said Wednesday. The announcement comes as the US formula shortage continues and experts have called for more domestic production and diversity among suppliers. “We’re moving forward with plans for a

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN Novavax’s Covid-19 vaccine is now available in the United States for use as a first booster dose for people 18 and older. The US Food and Drug Administration authorized the booster shot Wednesday for adults who are at least six months past a primary Covid-19 vaccine series, and the US Centers

By Jacqueline Howard and Raenu Charles, CNN It has been well-known in research that Black babies are about twice as likely to die as White babies before their first birthday. Now, a new study suggests that that disparity is even larger when babies are conceived by in vitro fertilization or other forms of assisted reproductive

By Jen Christensen, CNN A large new study published provides evidence that people 50 and older who sleep five hours or less at night have a greater risk of developing multiple chronic diseases as they age compared with peers who get a longer night’s rest. The study, published Tuesday in the journal PLOS Medicine, took

By Naomi Thomas, CNN In December, Stephanie Arceneaux of Utah will have been living with type 1 diabetes for 30 years. She was diagnosed at age 6. “I have seen a lot of changes within how diabetes is cared for,” she said. “I always thought that as I got older, that things would improve, and

By Elissa Strauss, CNN Hollywood’s version of childbirth bears little resemblance to my experience, or that of anyone else I know. On the screen, we almost always see soon-to-be-moms rushing to the hospital after a dramatic water breaking, a somewhat rare occurrence in real life, after which she howls and curses her way through a

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN It’s been months since your ability to taste and smell disappeared after a Covid-19 infection. You’ve tried to schedule an appointment with a specialist — if you were able to find one — only to discover waiting lists of six months or longer. “There was this explosion of patient calls after

By Aaron Gouveia, CNN Imparting life lessons to your own kids is part and parcel of parenting, but what about doing that for other people’s kids? When (if ever) is it appropriate to step in to issue a value judgment and draw a hard line in the sand when it involves not just your child

By Brenda Goodman, CNN Iana dos Reis Nunes was 43 when she told her husband that she could feel something like a bubble in her abdomen when she lay on her side. An ultrasound scan found spots on her liver, which led to blood tests and a colonoscopy. “There was a tumor the size of

By Elizabeth Cohen, Justin Lape and Danielle Herman, CNN After the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, an obstetrician who works at a hospital in the Northeast thought she could make a difference by publicly describing what she was seeing, by telling the stories of the patients she saw suffering in the

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN Covid-19 patients with a history of cardiovascular disease are at an increased risk of developing severe illness and could benefit most from the Covid-19 treatment Paxlovid — but there’s a catch. Paxlovid can have dangerous interactions with some of the most common medications for cardiovascular disease, including certain statins and heart

By Jamie Gumbrecht, CNN The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention signed off Wednesday on the use of updated Covid-19 boosters for children as young as 5. Earlier in the day, the US Food and Drug Administration expanded the shots’ emergency use authorization to include this age group. The moves mean children and teens

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN About half of registered voters in the United States say they are more motivated to vote in next month’s midterm elections than they were in previous elections — and abortion is a key issue driving that motivation, according to new survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Exactly 50% of US

Allison Hope, CNN National Coming Out Day is October 11, established to honor LGBTQ people stepping fully into their true selves to others –— also known as coming out of the closet. It’s a day for honoring the act, and all the related hopes, fears, dreams and expectations for the future. The designation started in

By Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent A new European study on colonoscopies — the largest of its kind — has complicated results, and it’s left some people wondering whether they should have the procedure to screen for colon cancer. “I think the most important message is that colon cancer screening is effective, and you

By Carma Hassan, CNN About 11.5 million people in the United States have gotten an updated Covid-19 booster, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but more people need to prepare for fall and winter by getting their shots now, health officials said Friday. White House Covid-19 Response Coordinator Dr.

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN The breast cancer death rate in the United States has dropped significantly, but Black women continue to be more likely to die from the disease despite having a lower incidence of it, according to a new American Cancer Society report. The study published this week in the CA: A Cancer Journal

By Nadia Kounang, CNN In an emergency, everyone is taught to call 911, an alert for the fire department, emergency medical services or police to help. But what if the caller doesn’t need help because of a fire, accident or crime? As one recent caller to the 911 center in Durham, North Carolina, said: “I

By Carma Hassan, CNN All US-bound airline passengers who have been in Uganda in the 21 days before their arrival will be routed to one of five US airports for enhanced Ebola screening, the US Embassy in Uganda said Thursday. Starting at 11:59 p.m. ET Thursday, passengers will be routed to New York’s JFK airport;

By Madeline Holcombe, CNN The storm may have moved out, but Hurricane Ian’s impacts are far from over. After tearing through the Caribbean, it slammed into the southwest Florida coast as a Category 4 hurricane on Wednesday, September 28, causing widespread devastation — and more than 100 fatalities in the state. (Ian then slowed as

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN On one side of the room sits the cutest life-size stuffed animal you’ve ever seen. On the other side rests a real dog — same size, shape and even the same name as the stuffed version. You get to sit next to both of these fluffy friends and pet their fur.

By Brenda Goodman, CNN It’s been 100 days since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, undoing constitutional protections for abortion access. Many states immediately banned the procedure. A new survey by the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health nonprofit, shows how consequential that June 24 decision has been. The survey found that among 15 states

By Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN The CNN/KFF Mental Health Survey is a joint project of CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation designed to assess Americans’ outlook on mental health and mental health care in the US today. Surveys were conducted by SSRS from July 28 through August 9, 2022, among a random national

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN An overwhelming majority of people in the United States think the country is experiencing a mental health crisis, according to a new survey from CNN in partnership with the Kaiser Family Foundation. Nine out of 10 adults said ​they believed that there’s a mental health crisis in the US today. Asked

By Brenda Goodman, CNN The experimental Alzheimer’s drug lecanemab made big news last week when the companies testing it released trial results that showed the drug met its goals, making it one of the first dementia drugs to return positive results. In a randomized, placebo-controlled study of nearly 1,800 people who were in the early

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN Imagine waking up one morning after recovering from Covid-19 to find that your coffee smells like unwashed socks, your eggs reek of feces and your orange juice tastes metallic. Oddly, that’s a good thing: It’s a sign you still have a working sense of smell — even if it’s miswired in

By Jacqueline Howard, CNN A new treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The FDA announced approval of Relyvrio, developed by Amylyx Pharmaceuticals, on Thursday. The oral medication can be taken as a standalone therapy or with other treatments, according to the company, and it