WellnessAid/Health Services

Patients 'Free From Cancer' After Immune-Boost Treatment

LkPow

Cancer patients have been left free of the disease after being treated with a new drug which harnesses the power of their own immune cells.

Picture: What Happens to Your Body if You Stop Smoking Right Now?

Galen

This is a diagram of how your health risks decrease after you quit smoking. Are you still unsure if it's worth it?

Video: Body Image After Breast Cancer

Fiona

For women, breast cancer remains a common and dreaded experience. It is normal for a diagnosis of breast cancer to evoke grief, anger, and intense fear. It can also alter perception of self: body image. This video from Stanford University talks about the body image after breast cancer surgery. You'll need Real Player (or compatible video software) to play this video.

Video: Some Of the Stages of Social Anxiety

Neatly

A real person tell her story of Social Axiety.

Legal Drugs, Lethal Access: Improperly Prescribed Pain Medicines

Grinch

There is a fine line between the legitimate treatment of pain and improperly prescribing drugs. When doctors cross it, they almost always avoid criminal charges and often keep their medical licenses. Yet for their patients, the consequences can be grave: prison, addiction and even death.

Another Reason to Get Rid of The Belly Fat: Dementia

Galen

Middle-aged people with excess visceral fat - usually apparent in the thick waist or pot belly of an apple-shaped body - are nearly three times more likely to suffer from dementia in their 70s and 80s than people with little to no belly fat, according to a study of Kaiser Permanente patients.

Antidepressant Drugs Don't Work – Official Study

Sceptic

They are among the biggest-selling drugs of all time, the "happiness pills" that supposedly lift the moods of those who suffer depression and are taken by millions of people in the UK every year. But one of the largest studies of modern antidepressant drugs has found that they have no clinically significant effect. In other words, they don't work.

Cancer: Fear itself

LkPow

When patients are diagnosed with cancer -- or even if they're just being tested -- they're often engulfed by anxiety. Sometimes, they exaggerate the threat. Now, researchers want to help ease the worry.

What Addicts Need

Healer

What does it mean to be an addict? For a long time the answer was that someone "lacked willpower," a tautology that is pretty much useless as a guide to treatment. In the current jargon of the recovery movement, addiction to alcohol, drugs or nicotine is a "bio-psycho-social-spiritual disorder," Addiction isn't a weakness; it's an illness. Now vaccines and other new drugs may change the way we treat it.

How to save a billion lives

Galen

A war against the weed spreads and escalates, though the odds are unequal. Even more than tempting liquors like tequila, tobacco is a pleasure that the Old World wishes it had never taken from the New. When Christopher Columbus was met by tribesmen with “fruit, wooden spears and certain dried leaves which gave off a distinct fragrance”, he threw the last gift away. But his shipmates brought home the custom of sucking in the smoke. What to do about his now?

Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney 'Had Secret Heart Surgery'

Sceptic

The former Beatle, 65, had coronary angioplasty to open up arteries in his heart and increase blood flow. Sir Paul opted for the surgery after consulting a Harley Street specialist at the London Clinic.

Rule No. 1: Don't Let a Diagnosis Slow You Down

Grinch

Most people wouldn't think about spending more time on the job after being diagnosed with a terminal illness and given just five months to live. It's not exactly the best time to make plans to attend a three-day industry conference a few months away. Or get more involved in day-to-day operations or long-term planning. The last thing you might do is squeeze in a quick wedding between board meetings. But if you're Mischa Weisz, a 51-year-old self-made millionaire, you're doing all those things.

Seven Medical Myths

LkPow

Ask your doctor how much water you should drink or why you couldn't keep your eyes open after Thanksgiving dinner, and you're likely to get the same misinformation your mother-in-law might dispense. A study published in the December 2007 British Medical Journal tweaked physicians on their acceptance of some widespread medical beliefs that might now be reclassified as old wives' tales. Here's a rundown...

'Medical Tourism' Industry Grows Rapidly

Neatly

Rising health care costs in the United States and longer waiting times in Canada are inducing patients to seek treatment overseas. The appeal of this phenomenon is driven by cost savings as high as 90%, depending on the procedure and the country in which it is performed, and virtually no wait times.

Photos: Faces Of Addiction - What Drugs Do To People

Grinch

Check out what happened to a women addicted to drugs in less then four years. There are also photos of other people changed by drug habit.