THURSDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Most teenagers think they're invincible, and that goes double for talented teenage athletes. They're young, immortal, at the top of their game, the envy of their friends.

So when news hits that an apparently healthy, high school or college athlete has dropped dead in the midst of playing his or her favorite sport, millions of parents get...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- They're the ultimate creepy crawler. Creatures that truly give people the willies. And they're apt to make you feel unclean, or maybe even a bad parent (neither of which, experts say, is valid).

Head lice truly are nasty little buggers -- parasitic insects that infest the head, eyebrows and eyelashes of their human hosts and cause the creepiest...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY. Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- For Lisa Byrns, a school nurse, dealing with head lice brings out the investigator in her.

Byrns and her fellow school nurses battle head lice outbreaks in fits and starts. Infestations usually occur during transitional times, such as when kids return to school, often fresh from summer camps or other social situations where they were in close...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Significant distrust of the health-care system is a major reason why black Americans donate blood at lower rates than whites, says a new study.

Researchers at the New York Blood Center in New York City analyzed the responses of 930 black participants in Atlanta who completed an 81-question survey.

The results showed that 17 percent of the...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Taking multivitamins does not reduce colorectal cancer patients' risk of dying or, among survivors, the likelihood that the cancer will return, a new study shows.

Between 26 percent and 77 percent of cancer survivors in the United States say they take multivitamins in the belief that it will help them fight their cancer, noted the researchers at...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Young women are more likely to use birth control if their partners are in favor of it, new study findings suggest.

In fact, women were more than twice as likely to use an effective method of birth control consistently if their male sex partner was "very" in favor of birth control, the researchers found.

The study, funded by the U.S. Centers...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Testing simple physical abilities may help predict a person's risk of death, suggests a new study.

Measuring basic capabilities such as grip strength, walking speed, rising from a chair, or balancing on one leg reveal a person's capacity to perform everyday tasks, explained the researchers at University College London in the United...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- Patients who experience sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital setting fare just as well when treated with chest compressions before being treated with an electrical defibrillator as they do when getting immediate defibrillation, new research indicates.

In fact, immediate chest compression treatment may actually improve a patient's...(click link above to read more)

FRIDAY, Sept. 10 (HealthDay News) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration may soon approve genetically modified salmon for humans to eat, a prospect that is raising concern among some consumer advocates who consider the fish a threat to both health and the environment.

On Sept. 3, a scientific panel of experts that advises the FDA paved the way for the approval of genetically modified...(click link above to read more)

THURSDAY, Sept. 9 (HealthDay News) -- Americans who have health insurance through large, employer-sponsored health plans will see a number of plan design changes in 2011, and they'll be paying more for that coverage, employers and benefits consultants say.

"You're going to see higher premiums and higher contributions from the individual members of the plan,"...(click link above to read more)