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When people suffering a stroke need a transfer to another hospital, time is of the essence. But a new study finds that most Americans in that situation face delays.

The study, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, looked at the issue of "door-in, door-out"...

Levan Singletary's alarm buzzed at 5:15 a.m., telling him to move the car for street sweeping.

It was dark when Singletary, who goes by "Van," left the apartment he shares with his wife, Angela. They live in Aliso Viejo, California, near Laguna Beach. He trotted down the two flights of stairs and strode about 200 yards to the car, moved it across the street and went back upstairs.

V...

Five days after giving birth to her second child, Lauren Lowrey woke up with a sharp pain in her upper back. She couldn't draw in a deep breath.

The TV news anchor, who was living in Indianapolis at the time, was recovering from a delivery via cesarean section. But her symptoms didn't make sense. When she tried to sleep, she woke up gasping for air. She had a headache. She thought it stra...

Researchers have long understood that people with chronic health conditions, such as heart disease, are at increased risk for depression. The same may be true for people with COVID-19 symptoms that linger for months and sometimes years.

An estimated 28% of U.S. adults who have had acute COVID-19 infections say they have experienced long COVID at some point, according to the latest survey ...

After a seven-hour drive back home with his family to Woodbury, Minnesota, Dave Ogle planned to do what he always did: haul his suitcases upstairs to unpack and do laundry.

"Dave, please, let's just relax and leave it for tomorrow," said his wife, Kris Patrow.

He reluctantly agreed and joined her on the couch to watch their favorite new series, "Yellowstone."

A few minutes int...

What researchers call 'social factors' are largely responsible for Black Americans having a greater risk of death from heart disease than whites, according to a new study.

Among the social factors that contribute to this racial disparity are unemployment, low income, lack of regular access to health care and lack of a partner, Tulane University researchers said.

"For so many years w...

Sure, the end of summer vacation makes many kids groan. But many will also be cheering the return of fall sports. That's a good thing, experts say.

Exercise habits form early and pay off for life, said Dr. Benjamin Levine, director of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas. For kids to see that payoff, though, he said exercise...

Traditionally, many decisions about medical treatment were left up to doctors: They decided, and patients agreed.

Today, health care professionals are embracing the idea of shared decision-making, where patients become informed partners in their choices. A new report from the American Heart Association, published Monday in the journal Circulation, could help make that concept more common ...

If you get cross-eyed thinking about carbohydrates, that's understandable.

They can be, quite literally, both simple and complex. They abound in snacks that nobody would call healthy but also appear in foods considered essential to good health.

"It gets a little confusing," said Andrew Odegaard, associate professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, I...

Any parent knows that back-to-school season can turn into one of the busiest times of the year. As a medical professional whose many roles include being a parent to two adolescents, Dr. Natalie Muth might know more than most.

Muth is a pediatrician and registered dietitian at Children's Primary Care Medical Group in Carlsbad, California. She's also a spokesperson for the American Academy ...

A large clinical trial weighing the medical merits of the obesity drug Wegovy has unearthed a significant positive side effect.

Taking the medication cut the risk of serious heart problems by 20%, drug maker Novo Nordisk announced Tuesday.

"People living with obesity have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease but, to date, there are no approved weight-management medications pr...

Donnese Tyler's schedule was chock-full. With a husband, two sons, a demanding job in contracts management and a reluctance to say no to anyone, she rarely made time for herself.

On an errand-filled Wednesday last October, she was looking forward to the monthly meeting of the mothers' club at her son's high school. As the group's vice president, she helped run the meeting. She was also ea...

Fatal heart disease in the United States dropped about 4% a year between 1990 and 2019, but Americans need to quit smoking, drinking and overeating or those gains could be wiped out, according to new research.

The declining rates of fatal heart disease have stalled, according to the research from Rutgers University-New Brunswick in New Jersey.

"The overall numbers are good. We saw ...

Rekha Desai planned to play Legos and blocks with her 2-year-old grandson, Kaveh, as she watched him in his Atlanta home.

But Rekha never arrived. Instead, the 73-year-old lay in a gurney thousands of feet in the air after having a stroke.

A helicopter raced Rekha to a hospital that could perform a specialized procedure. Her son, Dr. Dhaval Desai, drove 20 minutes to meet her. His w...

Covered in menacing needlelike spines, the prickly pear cactus demands to be treated with care. In return, it will reward you with a juicy neon fruit and fleshy green pads that have nourished people for millennia.

While the spines that protect the plant from predators can intimidate, the showy clusters of yellow, red and orange flowers that bloom atop the cactus pads can captivate. These ...

Since she was a child, Yanela Vickers has loved babies and the medical field. She dreamed of going into obstetrics and gynecology.

Instead, Yanela got a close look at the profession as a patient. She was 18 and five months pregnant when she walked across the stage to collect her high school diploma in June 2007.

For the past two months, Yanela had felt so fatigued she could hardly g...

They say home is where the heart is. But can a person's home also play a role in how healthy that heart is?

A large body of research suggests it can. Experts say housing -- where homes are located and if a person has one at all -- can make a major contribution to cardiovascular health, impacting numerous risk factors as well as a person's access to the resources needed to maintain good he...

Hal Harbuck was walking from the dock to his family's lake cabin when he felt a severe pain in his chest. Having recently been water skiing, he wondered if he'd pulled a muscle. Then again, it also felt like the worst heartburn he'd ever felt.

He eventually realized he might be having a heart attack.

He sat on the sofa and chewed on an aspirin while his adult son, Josh, called the n...

Sleep apnea may increase the risk of heart attack and stroke as erratic breathing causes oxygen levels to drop, new research shows.

"These findings will help better characterize high-risk versions of obstructive sleep apnea," said co-author Ali Azarbarzin, director of the Sle...

Black people tend to be more vulnerable to suffering severe strokes, but scientists have long struggled to figure out why.

Until now: New research suggests it may boil down to having a particular version of a gene involved in clotting.

"This could potentially change the entire rubric for how we treat strokes. So it really does have some potential, very, very consequential effect on ...

Venting -- the release of negative, pent-up emotions -- can feel good. But is it actually good for you? Or does it do more harm than good to dwell on negative thoughts and feelings?

Experts say that depends on a number of factors, including who's on the receiving end of a venting session, how often a person does it and what type of feedback they receive.

"By and large, we do need to...

For years, older adults took a baby aspirin a day to help ward off a first-time heart attack or stroke. Now yet another study is showing the risks are not worth it for most.

Specifically, researchers found the risk of brain bleeding while using low-dose aspirin outweighed any potential benefit against stroke for relatively healthy older adults -- that is, those with no history of heart di...

Late one evening, Dawn Berry took a call from her grandmother's nursing home. Her grandmother had been found unresponsive in bed. What should they do?

Dawn, who was then 43, had worked in the medical field for more than 20 years in her hometown of Oklahoma City. When her grandmother had a severe stroke at home a few months earlier, Dawn's aunts and uncles authorized her to make medical de...

Few people know more about stroke prevention and brain health than neurologist and epidemiologist Dr. Bruce Ovbiagele. And one of the first things he'd like you to know is that you have a "tremendous" amount of control over your own stroke risk.

Most strokes are preventable, said Ovbiagele, a professor of neurology and associate dean at the University of California, San Francisco. "And wh...

New guidelines detailing how to care for people with heart disease come with some easy-to-grasp warnings for patients.

The chronic coronary disease guidelines from the American Heart Association and American College of Cardiology, published Thursday in the AHA journal Circulation, are no incremental update, said Dr. Salim Virani, chairperson of the expert panel that rewrote them.

"I...