Dear Mayo Clinic: Why does my doctor want to know what supplements I'm taking, even if I don't have any health problems and don't take more than the recommended amounts?

A: It's important to tell your health care provider about any dietary supplements you take. Although you don't need a prescription for most supplements, that doesn't mean they ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- When the Democratic presidential debate turned to health care Tuesday, the candidates engaged in a now-familiar clash. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders unapologetically pushed their case for government-run "Medicare for All" as Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg warned that they were not being up front with voters about...Read more

With the 2020 election months away, President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is touting his health care record as a key reason voters should grant him another term.

Those talking points were distilled in a Dec. 31 social media post from Team Trump, the campaign's official Twitter account, and again in a post on Monday from the president's ...Read more

WASHINGTON -- Deaths from boozing and bingeing more than doubled in the past two decades, as alcohol consumption per person rose 8%, with sharp increases in the rate for women and the middle-aged.

Men were three-quarters of the total but fatalities for women rose at a faster rate: 85% versus 39% for males, according to 1999-2017 research by the...Read more

Kristie Flowers had been sick with the flu for four or five days in July before the 52-year-old registered nurse from Genoa, Colo., acknowledged she needed to go to the ER.

At Lincoln Community Hospital, about 10 miles from her home on the Eastern Plains of Colorado, doctors quickly diagnosed her with pneumonia and sepsis. Her right lung had ...Read more

Tens of thousands of people fatally overdose each year on opioids and other drugs. Sometimes medical examiners label them accidents, and sometimes they don't know what to call them.

But where humans waver, a computer program using a kind of artificial intelligence finds many are likely suicides -- possibly a third of them, according to a study ...Read more

Coffee is the go-to morning beverage for many people. But if you swapped out your morning joe for a cup of tea, it may lead to a healthier, longer life.

That's according to a recent Chinese study.

Chinese researchers found that drinking tea over a long period of time -- especially green tea -- had associated health benefits. The benefits were ...Read more

We're in the throes of the flu season, but with months left, doctors are emphasizing it's not too late to get your flu shot.

The flu vaccine remains the best form of defense against the flu, according to Children's Healthcare of Atlanta System Medical Director of Infectious Diseases Dr. Andi Shane and other doctors and experts here and across ...Read more

Lyme disease is caused by four main species of bacteria. Borrelia burgdorferi and Borrelia mayonii cause Lyme disease in the United States, while Borrelia afzelii and Borrelia garinii are the leading causes in Europe and Asia. The most common tick-borne illness in these regions, Lyme disease is transmitted by the bite of an infected black-legged...Read more

DEAR MAYO CLINIC: My tailbone has been hurting for the past few weeks. I have read that it takes a while to heal, but is there anything I can do in the meantime to lessen the pain? At what point would it be necessary to see my doctor?

ANSWER: Although tailbone pain can be uncomfortable, in most cases it will go away on its own within a few ...Read more

What "healthy" means to each of us is very different -- and is what we often discuss when developing recipes for, or talking about, eating to feel good.

More often than not the meals we manage are a hodgepodge of random bits of leftovers from recipe testing, foraged edible bric-a-brac from people bringing food into the offices, or completely ...Read more

In the United States, a legion of administrative health care workers and health insurance employees who play no direct role in providing patient care costs every American man, woman and child an average of $2,497 per year.

Across the border in Canada, where a single-payer system has been in place since 1962, the cost of administering health ...Read more

A study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association indicates there may be a link between binge drinking and heavy alcohol consumption and heart damage.

Reuters reported that researchers analyzed data from nearly 3,000 adults from northwest Russia. They found that heavy drinking was associated with increased levels of blood ...Read more

Elizabeth Warren said Saturday that a big change in the U.S. health-care system would make a lot of people "uneasy," emphasizing she wouldn't immediately push a full Medicare for All plan until people have three years to try it.

At a town hall in Manchester, Iowa, one voter asked Warren why her Medicare for All plan would take three years to ...Read more

Recently, the House of Representatives passed a bill, the Workplace Violence Prevention for Healthcare and Social Service Workers Act. This bill, as the name suggests, seeks to provide legal protections to health care workers from workplace violence. The passing of this bill did not create much fanfare; we did not see any coverage of it on the ...Read more

The morning-after pill is a type of emergency birth control (contraception). Emergency contraception is used to prevent pregnancy for women who've had unprotected sex or whose birth control method has failed.

The morning-after pill is intended for backup contraception only, not as a primary method of birth control. Morning-after pills contain ...Read more

The Food and Drug Administration has updated the Nutrition Facts label on packaged foods and beverages to reflect new scientific information, including the link between diet and chronic diseases. Manufacturers with $10 million or more in annual sales were required to switch to the new label by Jan. 1, 2020. Here, Angie Murad, a wellness ...Read more