Dominique was hooked on cocaine and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day until she stumbled onto ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic concoction that she says has changed her life.

The French-American woman, who lives in Los Angeles and did not want her real name used, is among thousands of people across the United States who are increasingly turning to the powerful psychedelic brew from the Amazon to overcome addiction, depression or psychological trauma.

A 67-year-old Greek grandmother has given birth to her daughter's baby girl, becoming the world's oldest such surrogate mother, her medical team said Friday.

Surgeons in Poland said Thursday they had successfully attached a hand from a deceased donor to a man born without one, in what they claimed was a world first.

A Mexican man believed to be the world's most obese plans to undergo gastric bypass in the new year and reduce his 590 kilos (1,300 pounds) by half, his doctor said Wednesday.

The man known as Juan Pedro has diabetes, high blood pressure and chronic lung obstruction, and needs to reduce his weight dramatically to reduce his health risks, doctor Jose Castaneda Cruz said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday ordered tighter regulations on alcohol as the death toll among those who drank bath essence containing toxic methanol rose to 62 in Siberia.

Israel's army is to relax its disciplinary action against soldiers accused of smoking cannabis while on leave, a general overseeing the reform said Wednesday.

Japan began killing about 122,000 farm birds on Tuesday to contain another outbreak of a highly contagious strain of avian flu, officials said.

Dozens of health facilities supported by the World Health Organization in strife-torn areas of Sudan risk closure due to a lack of funds, exposing one million people to likely epidemics.

Police in Montreal Friday raided six cannabis shops one day after they opened, following a warning by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that recreational marijuana is not yet legal in Canada.

Thrusting their arm into a box full of hungry mosquitoes, a group of brave volunteers in a Burkina Faso laboratory test an innovative weapon in the fight against malaria -- soap.

The team behind the "Faso Soap" project aims to create a cheap, accessible product to repel mosquitoes and protect people from a disease that claimed nearly 500,000 lives in 2015, most of them in Africa.