CNN – Health

Jessica Lauser lost much of her eyesight shortly after she was born. She was teased in school until she found chess. Here’s her advice to those facing challenges.

By Matt Villano, CNN Jessica Lauser is relentless on the chess board. She plays quickly, applying constant pressure on her opponents. She attacks constantly, not unlike the Beth Harmon character from the Netflix television series, “The Queen’s Gambit.” She baits her opponents out of their comfort zones, then leverages the element of surprise. Her success

By Aya Elamroussi, CNN As President Joe Biden celebrated America’s 300 million vaccine dose milestone Friday, experts warned that the spread of coronavirus variants could spur a surge in troubling new cases if more people don’t get inoculated. Overall, Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the US have declined significantly in recent months. But virus

By David G. Allan, CNN Welcome to the start of summer! Now slow down. You don’t want to miss anything by hurrying past it. And there is no need to sweat even more, unless you’re also having fun while doing it. That’s the wisdom of summer. It teaches us to be fully awake, engaged and

By David G. Allan, CNN In September 2019, just ahead of the Covid-19 pandemic — so roughly before-anyone-can-remember ago — Merriam-Webster added the term “dad joke” to the dictionary, to little fanfare. As it turns out, the official addition to our vocabulary was just in time to remind us of the value of instantly available

By Virginia Langmaid, CNN Coronavirus variants are what keep Dr. Scott Lindquist, an epidemiologist for Washington state, up at night. “I have got to be honest — last thing I think about before I go to bed are the variants and the first thing I think about in the morning are the variants,” Lindquist told

By Jen Christensen, CNN Dr. Michael Saag normally cares for Covid-19 patients, but early in the pandemic, he became a patient. Now, he has joined the ranks with lingering symptoms from a condition doctors are still trying to understand. In Saag’s case, Covid-19 was never so bad he had to be hospitalized, but he spent

CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta highlights Lakiea Bailey, a scientist with sickle cell disease who is working to find a cure.

By Sandee LaMotte, CNN Older adults who have significant difficulty falling asleep and who experience frequent night awakenings are at high risk for developing dementia or dying early from any cause, a new study finds. “These results contribute to existing knowledge that sleep plays a very important role, each and every night, for reducing our

Amy Chillag, CNN Lakiea Bailey has tried to hide the pain and breathlessness she feels from her disease for most of her life. As a child, she missed weeks out of every school year because of sickle cell — a painful, genetic disease that’s believed to impact 100,000 Americans. Patients’ red blood cells are “sickle”

By Madeline Holcombe and Jay Croft, CNN The Delta variant of Covid-19 is expected to become the dominant strain in this country, and it’s further reason why people need to ramp up the vaccination pace, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Friday. The Delta variant, also known as B.1.617.2,

By Maggie Fox, CNN The teenaged boys all looked like they were having heart attacks. They complained of chest pain and general discomfort, and tests looked at first as if they were suffering an acute myocardial infarction, or heart attack. But they weren’t. Instead, the seven youths ages 14 to 19 were suffering from a

By Megan Marples, CNN After over a year of staying at home and following strict safety guidelines, many people are understandably reluctant to step out their front door and re-enter society. For some, they’re downright terrified. Psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Bregman calls this fear “cave syndrome,” a non-medical term he’s coined. At his practice in Coral

By Travis Caldwell, CNN The country continued this week on a path to reopening from the Covid-19 pandemic, with major population centers such as New York and California pulling back on restrictions following increased vaccinations and lowered infections. Yet with overall vaccination rates in the US slowing this month when compared to highs in April,

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN As newly reported Covid-19 cases in the United States drop to some of the lowest levels of the pandemic, the link between vaccinations and transmission is getting clearer, exposing pockets of at-risk populations, but also a safer path forward. A CNN analysis found that states that have fully vaccinated more than

By Maggie Fox, CNN Pen Farthing was on a flight from Kabul, Afghanistan, to Houston when the news broke: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was going to stop missions like his for at least the next year. Farthing was bringing two dogs rescued by US troops in Afghanistan to their new homes

By Dana Santas, CNN Breath is a powerful force — without it, there is no life. But what you might not realize is that the quality of your breathing directly impacts the quality of your life. Breathing plays a vital role in how you think, feel, rest and recover, and it even impacts your posture

By Elissa Strauss, CNN The pressure to stand out plagues us all. Even if we don’t really want that job, that body, that car, that trip or that kitchen, we’re aware of the attention given to those who have them — on Instagram, TikTok and even in real life. And we might feel bad for

By Aya Elamroussi, Steve Almasy and Lauren Mascarenhas, CNN A coronavirus variant first identified in India is “like Covid on steroids,” Andy Slavitt, former White House senior adviser for Covid-19 response, said Wednesday. “(The Delta variant) is a more virulent strain,” Slavitt told CNN. “This is like Covid on steroids. You can be around people

By Lauren Mascarenhas, CNN As pediatricians vaccinate newly eligible children and teens against Covid-19, some of them say they are giving just as many shots to adults. When the Biden administration kicked off a “month of action” this June, aimed at vaccinating 70% of the adult population with at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose by