Health | featured news

A terrible future could be on the horizon, a future which rips one of the greatest tools of medicine out of the hands of doctors. A simple cut to your finger could leave you fighting for your life. Luck will play a bigger role in your future than any doctor could. The most basic operations - getting an appendix removed or a hip replacement - could become deadly.

Even without modern-day temptations like fast food or cigarettes, people had clogged arteries some 4,000 years ago, according to the biggest-ever study of mummies searching for the condition....

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Thursday warned state and local health officials about potential infections from a deadly virus previously unseen in humans that has now sickened 14 people and killed 8.

Two food bloggers petition Kraft to take the yellow dye out of its popular product.

Researchers are reporting success with using cash incentives to help people lose weight. In a yearlong study, people were offered a chance to win or lose $20 a month if they met certain diet goals. They lost an average of 9 pounds compared to just over 2 pounds for other study participants who were not offered the chance to win money if they shed pounds.

What is it about the Italians? They smoke more than us, they earn less, their economy is in even worse shape than ours, they spend less on healthcare, and yet - they live longer. Not just a bit, but a whopping 18 months more on average.

Hospitals need to take action against the spread of a deadly, antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The bacteria kill up to half of patients who are infected.

The growing toll of diabetes cost the nation a record high $245 billion in 2012, a 41% increase from $174 billion in 2007, according to new research released today. The study Economic Costs of Diabetes in the U.S. in 2012, commissioned by the American Diabetes Association, estimated the health care and work-related costs of diagnosed diabetes. The full study will be published in the April issue of Diabetes Care.

Your bosses want you to eat your broccoli, hit the treadmill and pledge you'll never puff on a cigarette. But a new study raises doubts that workplace wellness programs save the company money. In what's being called the most rigorous look yet inside the wellness trend, independent researchers tracked the program at a major St. Louis hospital system for two years. Hospitalizations for employees and family members dropped dramatically, by 41 percent overall for six major conditions. But increased outpatient costs erased those savings.

Many postpartum women have violent thoughts involving their infants, but we don't talk about this side effect of motherhood, Shanon Cook says.