Michael Jackson suffered from severe bouts of insomnia and pleaded for a powerful sedative despite knowing its harmful effects, a nutritionist who worked with the singer said Tuesday. Cherilyn Lee, a registered nurse who first met Jackson in January to treat his children for a common cold, said she rejected his requests for Diprivan and informed him of the side effects. "I told him this medication is not safe," Lee said. "He said, 'I just want to get some sleep. ...

When people think of coffee, words such as caffeine, aroma and energy may spring to mind. 'Good breath,' however, certainly isn't one of them. So researchers at the University of Tel Aviv in Israel, were in for a surprise when their study into the relation between coffee and bad breath, showed that coffee can actually lead to good breath. Breath specialist Mel Rosenberg of the university's Faculty of Medicine found that there are certain components in coffee that inhibit the ...

The claim always seemed too good to be true: park your infant in front of a video and, in no time, he or she will be talking and getting smarter than the neighbor's kid. In the latest study on the effects of popular videos such as the "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby" series, researchers find that these products may be doing more harm than good. And they may actually delay language development in toddlers. Led by Frederick Zimmerman ...

Going to the ballpark, visiting friends and playing bingo are simple diversions for many of us. But for the elderly, these social pastimes may play a critical role in preserving their physical and mental health. In fact, a new study suggests that the less time older people spend engaged in social activity, the faster their motor function tends to decline. "Everybody in their 60s, 70s and 80s is walking more slowly than they did when they were 25," says ...

What if science made a pill to protect us from addiction — keeping us from smoking cigarettes, getting fat or abusing drugs and alcohol? According to encouraging results from several lines of study, it seems that day may be closer than we thought. Researchers in labs around the world are now developing vaccines to inoculate people against dangerously addictive substances such as cocaine, heroin and methamphetamine. Within "one to 10 years, and closer to one year," says Dr. ...

The Institute of Medicine , the nation's most influential medical advisory group, has updated its guidelines for weight gain during pregnancy for the first time since 1990. The revised recommendations, released May 28, which also include the first advice regarding exercise during pregnancy, reflect new data on prenatal health as well as several recent shifts in the obstetric landscape — pregnant women in the U.S. are now older, more likely to deliver multiple births and ethnically more diverse than ...

In the '90s, Americans grew fond of the idea that you can fix depression simply by taking a pill — most famously fluoxetine , though fluoxetine is just one of at least seven selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors that have been prescribed to treat hundreds of millions of people around the world. But in the past few years, researchers have challenged the effectiveness of Prozac and other SSRIs in several studies. For instance, a review published in the Journal of ...

No one can truly know what goes on inside a marriage except the two people involved, but researchers are getting increasingly good glimpses at what makes couples tick, how relationships are stressed and what factors can keep the spark alive. (CNN) -- No one can truly know what goes on inside a marriage except the two people involved, but researchers are getting increasingly good glimpses at what makes couples tick, how relationships are stressed and what factors can keep the ...

The wedding of a Boston, Massachusetts, medical student accused of killing a woman he met through Craigslist has been called off, his fiancee's lawyer said. Megan McAllister, who was accompanied by her mother, met Phillip Markoff for about 25 minutes in a Boston jail earlier this week, her lawyer Robert Honecker told CNN affiliate WCVB. "It was an emotional conversation on both sides," Honecker said, adding that McAllister is planning to move back to her home state of New Jersey. ...

It's a confounding question on the lips of disease detectives: Why have the only deaths from the swine flu outbreak happened in Mexico? Investigators also want to know why the disease has killed young adults, who should have the greatest resistance. "They're good questions that we're asking, too," said Von Roebuck, spokesman for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "We're still young in this investigation and we're still trying to understand exposure in this country as well as ...