Children's bodies are fragile and need special care. A number of conditions, including developmental and behavioral disorders, affect children in particular.
When Tess Hamermesh found out her nana had cancer, her questions were simple.
A new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that one in 110 children in the United States had autism in 2006.
Hayli Murphy hears her mother's cell phone ring, and she bounces off the couch to get it. Watching her run around, it's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, the 9-year-old was heavily sedated in a pediatric intensive care unit, a ventilator doing the job her lungs -- ravaged by H1N1 flu -- could no longer do.
Teen girls can skip Pap tests, according to new guidelines that say women should start cervical cancer screening at age 21. But some experts are concerned that rates of sexually transmitted diseases or unplanned pregnancies could increase without the Pap test to prompt a doctor's visit.
Think your children are getting hours of playtime, story readings and stimulating lessons at day care? Maybe they are, but they could also be spending a chunk of their day watching TV or DVDs.
When Melinda Roberts is watching animated movies with her kids -- 7, 9, and 11 -- she'll help them recognize voice actors and talk about the creation process so they won't get scared.
Gigi reaches up into her sun salutation. She steps back into her high lunge and kicks her legs straight into plank pose, a push-up she holds without wobbling for 10 seconds before looking up impatiently at her yoga teacher.
When Kerry Higuera started bleeding three months into her pregnancy, she feared she was miscarrying. Heading to the emergency room seemed like the prudent thing to do.
In the year since a U.S. cancer researcher's warning drew wide attention, more evidence is emerging that long-term cell phone use is associated with cancer, but there's still not a definitive explanation or proof of cause and effect.
On a recent flight from San Francisco, California, to Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. Julie Gerberding was thrilled to get bumped up to first class. The thrill, however, quickly disappeared: As she did her victory walk to the front cabin, she noticed that the woman in the seat next to hers was hacking up a lung.
Nate Wordell, 7, just feels lousy: swollen eyes, cough, high fever, stomach ache and he's dehydrated. Nate has H1N1.
Nancy Brizendine's slow-paced life in California's Antelope Valley has become something of a slick race track.
Halloween is creeping up on us -- and as kids anticipate the occasion with excitement bordering on mania, parents often express concern.
Schizophrenia drugs, increasingly prescribed to children with bipolar disorder and other conditions, can cause youngsters to experience rapid weight gain, according to a new study.
My son is not a hugger. He's almost 2 years old, and I can count on one hand the times he's squeezed his chubby arms around my neck (they all involve my husband running the vacuum). I'm okay with this because on the rare occasion when I do get a hug, I get very emotional. I imagine most moms experience these my-heart-might-burst moments when a seconds-long embrace makes them feel like the luckiest person in the world. But for me, it's a little different. A little sweeter. And I am a lot luckier. See, I wasn't supposed to have a baby. I'm a cancer patient. Seven years ago I was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), a slow-moving form of blood cancer. I'm in remission, thanks to a medication I take every day that states right smack on the bottle: Do not get pregnant while taking this drug. But I did. Then I stopped my lifesaving medication and endured nine long months of what-ifs: What if the brief exposure to the drug affects the baby? What if my cancer comes back? What if I leave my child motherless? I took a big risk, but it paid off even bigger. Now I want to do it again.
Nearly one-third, or 28 percent, of adults and children hospitalized with H1N1, also known as swine flu, have asthma. That's more than any other chronic condition, according to a recent analysis of cases published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Yessica Maher of Los Angeles, California, feels let down. She had wanted to get the H1N1 vaccine for herself and her children, but that's proving to be difficult.
Hannah Powell-Auslam of La Mirada, California, had surgery this month to check her lymph nodes, just in case the breast cancer had spread.
Three years ago, Anne Willis mentioned to the man she was dating that she didn't know about her fertility, since she had undergone cancer treatment as a teenager. His response --"Oh, so you don't know if you're going be able to have kids?" -- was off-putting.
When she was about 8, Frida Sepulveda developed dark folds of skin around her neck. It's a well-known warning sign of type 2 diabetes.
Yessica Maher of Los Angeles, California, feels let down. She had wanted to get the H1N1 vaccine for herself and her children, but that's proving to be difficult.
We've had nearly every meal together for the past 14 years. We've been kayaking on the California coast. We've ridden airplanes, boats, horses, bikes, and an Israeli camel together.
Alisa Rock, whose 10-year-old son Connor has autism, says parents of autistic children often align themselves with one of two camps: There are those who believe that genes cause the disorder, and those firmly convinced that environmental factors are to blame.
An analysis of the sickest swine flu patients in Australia, Canada, Mexico, and New Zealand suggests that relatively healthy adolescents and young adults are among the most likely to get very sick after an H1N1 infection, a pattern similar to that seen in the 1918 influenza pandemic.
Mary Peterson of Des Moines, Washington, doesn't believe the vaccine for the novel H1N1 flu has been studied enough to get it for herself and her daughters, who are 1 and 3 years old.
Some children and teens are more likely than their peers to become addicted to the Internet, and a new study suggests it's more likely to happen if kids are depressed, hostile, or have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or social phobia.
At least three of the four makers of H1N1 vaccine have begun shipping their products, their representatives told CNN Tuesday.
Parents can check out growth charts -- a nifty graph that tells them where their child falls in relation to peers in terms of height and weight -- just about everywhere, from a child's vaccination records to the doctor's office.
At the beginning of the school year, a couple of hundred parents, myself included, gathered in the middle school lounge for the principal's back-to-school speech. The chatting hushed as the principal walked from the back of the room to the podium. As she proceeded down the aisle, parting the crowd of parents, she carried with her the biggest bottle of hand sanitizer I've ever seen.
There will be more than enough doses of the H1N1 vaccine to go around in the United States, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Thursday.
The ban on smoking in public places, such as bars and restaurants, has been one of the greatest public health debates of the early 21st century. Now, two large studies suggest that communities that pass laws to curb secondhand smoke get a big payoff -- a drop in heart attacks.
The reminders are everywhere: Wash your hands. Use hand sanitizers. Stay away from class if you're sick.
Think a little spanking won't do much harm to kids? New research says the effects can be long-lasting.
When Genevieve and Brian Skory were new to parenting, they allowed their two young kids to read or watch TV until they fell asleep.
Now that you have kids, you've probably realized that there was actually some sense behind all that advice your mother gave you.
Children with high-risk medical conditions or disabilities should be among the first to be vaccinated against H1N1 influenza, also known as swine flu, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised Thursday.
Calvino Inman had just stepped out of the shower one evening in May when a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror caused him to panic. "I looked up and saw myself, and I thought I was going to die," says the 15-year-old from Rockwood, Tennessee. His eyes were streaming tears of blood.
Matthew Sanchez had rarely seen his father cry. But when Rudjard Hayes looked at the X-rays of his son's spine after a high school football accident, he held his wife close and broke down, not knowing that his son could see him.
A third of military children surveyed who have a parent deployed in a war zone are at "high risk" for psychological problems, according to a new study by military doctors and researchers.
Over this past week, I had some interesting conversations with colleagues who are also health care professionals. These conversations usually start with, "You know what I hate about the media ... ?"
For 18 years, a girl who was whisked away into a secret backyard compound was forced to grow up in isolation.
For generations the residents of Sao Pedro, Brazil and neighboring Candido Godoi have known their isolated hamlet in southern Brazil was special.
The straight-up truth: Some childhood milestones are a lot less fun than others. No one actually looks forward to her kid needing stitches, getting cavities, or snapping a bone, yet medical rites of passage like these are as much a part of growing up as learning to ride a bike. (In fact, said bike may be to blame for a bunch of them!) And while some may simply be annoying to deal with, others can be downright scary. Whatever the case, we'll help you and the young'uns get through some of the most common, with a lot less drama.
She was called "the littlest refusenik," one of the many Soviet Jews denied permission to leave the Soviet Union because her father had been exposed to government secrets.
If you're like most Americans, you will consume 22 teaspoons, or 355 calories, of added sugar today. Now, the American Heart Association would like you to cut back dramatically.
Infant car safety seats can -- and do -- save newborns' lives in traffic accidents. In fact, you can't leave the hospital without one.
Known for building skate parks and shaping the skateboarding scene in New York, Andy Kessler, 48, died this week after an allergic reaction to an insect sting, friends and family told news media.
When Raffi Darrow brought in her two daughters, Wendy and Alice, for their annual back-to-school checkups this week, for the first time in her career as a mom, Darrow decided to be a rebel.
When Lana Phillip, now 45, decided to breast-feed her baby, she never imagined she would continue for three whole years.
Imagine you're about to travel to a foreign land. You've heard it can be a mighty dangerous place, but you have to go there -- you have no choice. You don't know exactly where the threats lurk, and you don't speak the language. Wouldn't it be nice to have a guide?
A whopping 70 percent of American kids aren't getting enough vitamin D, and such youngsters tend to have higher blood pressure and lower levels of good cholesterol than their peers, according to two new studies published this week in the journal Pediatrics. Low vitamin D levels also may increase a child's risk of developing heart disease later in life, experts say.
Unbeknownst to her parents, Sydney Kirk tried a little medical experiment on herself when she was in the eighth grade. For a day or two, every so often, she stopped taking her drugs for her attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder.
For Brad Cohen, the barking and squealing noises he could not control began in the fifth grade.
Kids plus germs often equals extreme yuckiness (think stomach flu). But there are some childhood afflictions that -- even though they're not at all dangerous -- are (how to put this?) truly disgusting. First, the good news: The four conditions described here have nothing to do with hygiene and are much more common than you think, so there's no need to be embarrassed. The bad news? Well, read on.
There may be a reason that children's asthma rates are so high in urban areas. Youngsters with stressed-out parents and exposure to air pollution have a higher risk of asthma, according to a study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In May, Denise Bertholin got married. She wore a white dress and carried beautiful lilies. She and her groom, Matt Braun, said "I do" in front of family and friends.
Pamela Hampton stands at the kitchen sink, her gaze trained out of the window of her family's small hillside home. The disaster site is not visible from where she stands, but she knows it is there, down the hill, around a short stretch of highway, less than a mile away.
When the swine flu burst onto the scene in April, the bug arrived with a few particularly ominous signs: The flu was resistant to a class of drugs often used to fight flu in the past, and experts were surprised that a nonhuman virus could have such rapid human-to-human transmission. Why was swine flu resistant to current medicines, and was this strain a new supergerm?
If you're feeling down, it can be hard to tell if you're experiencing a temporary case of the blues or a serious depression. Now a group of researchers say there's a relatively easy way to figure out whether some young adults are at greater risk of psychiatric problems or drug abuse -- just ask about their family.
Alternative treatments are as varied as the regions of the world they come from. And while they attract skepticism from some Western medical practitioners, they are an undeniable part of global health.
"Quick, I-V." "Is he breathing?" "Flip him over." "Heart rate? Pulse?" The nurses' commands and questions filled the recovery room at an Egyptian hospital.
No one expected them to live long.
Two federal agencies warned consumers Friday not to eat raw Nestle Toll House refrigerated cookie dough.
When she was 2 years old, Sonali Mavinkurve caught a cold. But this time there was nothing common about it.
Despite spending more money than any other country on health care, the United States does not lead the world in life expectancy, a long-known fact that some experts say could raise more questions in the health-care reform debate.
For eight years, Jessica Terry suffered from stomach pain so horrible, it brought her to her knees. The pain, along with diarrhea, vomiting and fever, made her so sick, she lost weight and often had to miss school.
Blockbuster movies are less likely to portray smokers than they have in the past, according to a new study. What's more, this decline in on-screen smoking may have occurred in tandem with a drop in the number of adolescents who have lit up in real life.
It's shortly after 5 a.m. when the phone rings, and on the line is a clearly anxious and worried parent.
Although it may have been Jon and Kate Gosselin's unusual family that landed them a reality show, it is their marital problems-- to which much of their audience can likely relate-- that have made them a household name in recent weeks.
Perhaps no one is watching the Daniel Hauser case in Minnesota more closely than Theresa and Greg Maxin in Ohio. Seven years ago, the Maxins found themselves fighting to keep their own son from having chemotherapy. But the two families' stories ended quite differently.
The death of boxing champion Mike Tyson's 4-year-old daughter after a treadmill accident highlights the issue of hidden dangers in the home.
The case of Daniel Hauser, a Minnesota teenager whose family rejected chemotherapy based on religious beliefs, raised questions about the rights of parents in determining medical treatments for their children. On Tuesday, the family consented to chemotherapy for the 13-year-old to treat his Hodgkin's lymphoma after the boy's tumor grew.
Jack Schwartz, 8, has had seasonal allergy symptoms in the past, but his parents never needed to give him medication.
As the summer swim season starts Memorial Day weekend, water quality and health experts have a message for swimmers: Please don't pee in the pool.
Lindsay Straub says it was her "dream job." Straub graduates from college Saturday, and just a few weeks ago, she was offered an entry-level position with an entertainment company.
Adults who were exposed to large amounts of secondhand smoke during childhood have lungs that look different on CT scans from those of people who grew up in a smoke-free environment, a new study suggests.
Public health officials are seeing a number of outbreaks of swine flu at schools nationwide, but closing those schools may not always be the best public health measure, a federal scientist said Tuesday.
Mothers often get blamed for the way their children turn out, and a new study gives additional weight to that accusation.
The average potency of marijuana, which has risen steadily for three decades, has exceeded 10 percent for the first time, the U.S. government will report on Thursday.
The size of a specific part of the brain may help experts pinpoint when autism could first develop, University of North Carolina researchers report.
The swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, is all over the news. A string of cases have been reported across the United States, as well as across the globe, with Mexico the hardest hit country, so far.
The intrusive voices popped into William "Bill" Garrett's head. "They're coming for you," the voices told the 18-year-old. "Find somewhere to hide; they're going to get you."
Ahmed Hamdi wants to be a superhero when he grows up. A lot of people at his school will tell you he already is one.
For most Americans, mosquitoes are pests whose bites leave behind itchy bumps. But in other parts of the world, mosquitoes carry a disease called malaria that kills more than a million people each year.
If you're looking to curb your appetite and improve your memory, you're probably exercising, eating healthier foods and trying to get some sleep.
Every week, Jackie Kaminer of Roswell, Georgia, buys fish for dinner at the local market. Although she knows it's full of nutrients -- including good-for-your-heart omega-3 fatty acids -- she's careful of the types of fish she brings home.
Naomi Zikmund-Fisher says her son's life was saved by her maternal instincts -- and her son's flat ears.
A five-eyed monster under the bed isn't what worries most kids. Experts say young people fear a lot of what's in the news -- from kidnappings to murders to salmonella.
Public health officials in Chicago said Monday that they have tested at least 10 family members of the medical intern linked to a tuberculosis scare in the city.
Nearly one-fifth of American 4-year-olds are obese, and children of color are at higher risk, according to new research.
A new study from Harvard Medical School found that babies who gained weight quickly had a sharply higher risk of obesity. The study followed close to 600 babies and found those in the top quarter of weight for their length at 6 months had a 40 percent higher risk of obesity by age 3 than smaller babies.
75 percent of U.S. adults are projected to be overweight or obese by 2015, according to researchers. Americans consume anywhere from 150 to 300 more calories than they did three decades ago and half of those calories come from liquid. A new study out of John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that reducing liquid calories, especially from sugar-sweetened drinks such as punches, fruit juices and sodas, helps people lose weight and keep it off.
Heather Moores and her 4-year-old son, Julian, sat in a waiting room at a pediatrician's office.
William Searing is an Eagle Scout who loves hiking, adventure, art and sports. At age 19, he's in an education program that bridges the gap from high school to getting a job. Wil has autism.
For 8-year-old Ryan Mohar, an elevator isn't just an elevator. He spends hours pressing the buttons and riding up and down, preferring this to the slew of alternatives that his teachers offer -- even candy.
Twins? Triplets? Octuplets? Sounds like a lot of stress to handle more than one baby at once.
I saw it -- I'm not blind: The hair peeking from under those arms and the little sprinkle of it Down There, too. The curvy hips and shapely legs and the bubble booty that would make the über-curvy Beyoncé do a double take.
If you have a stash of pistachios in your house, pistachio ice cream in your freezer or trail mix in your backpack, don't eat any of it.
A group of seven preschoolers gathered at a small table in the center of a brightly lit classroom and started playing with plastic blocks.
Men who are circumcised are less likely to get sexually transmitted infections such as genital herpes and human papillomavirus (HPV), but not syphilis, according to a study of adult African men published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
ASK AN EXPERT
© 2009 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Video
Photos
