Nail biting, is a behavioral activity that involves the biting of the nail or using the mouth for any other purpose different from its primary purpose of ingestion and speech making. This behavior is medically referred to as onychophagy. It is common to find children and adolescent indulging in the habit. However nail biting can be an impulse control disorder …
Category: Common Ailments
Yellow fever is caused by a virus which is carried by an infected female mosquito commonly found in tropical regions. It is easy to mix things up when of what exactly a feverish condition is. While a medical diagnosis provides an easy way out of the confusion, just knowing key differences that would help you identify a fever as a …
Arthritis is a Greek word used to refer to joint pain and other associated join disorders. The word ‘arthritis’ is a compound of two Greek words, ‘anthro’ and ‘itis’, meaning joint and inflammation respectively. While arthritis is a leading cause of disability worldwide, it should be noted that it is primarily not a disease but a primary or secondary symptom …
Vertigo is a medical condition of feeling constant dizziness. It is quite different from the dizziness you feel just before going to bed or after waking up from bed. It’s an extended dizziness that always leaves the feeling that the world around you is spinning or that objects around you are skipping. With this feeling, you often feel tipsy and …
Ebola is a life taking virus that causes a lot of disorders in a healthy body including fever, body aches, diarrhea, and sometimes the most dangerous ones which include bleeding inside and outside the body. The Ebola virus has the power to spread throughout the body and destroy your immune system and organs. It makes the blood cells level in …
Heat stroke is one of the most serious medical injuries that require special attention. If you or someone near you gets a heat stroke you should immediately seek help. Heat stroke has the power to damage your brain and other internal organs. It has been seen that heat stroke affects people above the age of 50 but it sometimes affect …
The excretion of dark, black, tarry feces from the anus as a result of bleeding in the digestive tract is known as Melena. This bleeding usually occurs at the upper gastrointestinal part of the alimentary canal. However, it is easy to mistaken several other abnormal digestive conditions that result in the excretion of black tarry feces for melena. For example …
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that occurs as a result of hormonal imbalance in women. In this condition male body attributes are more visible in a female body as a result of the dominance of the male hormone, androgen. This causes irregularity in menstrual periods and makes it harder to get pregnant. PCOS is also known to be one of …
Tooth decay is a bacterial infection that affects the teeth. Bacteria from leftover food particles are capable of secreting acids that breakdown the tooth and bore holes on them. Tooth decay has other medical terms like dental cavities or dental caries but essentially they all mean the same thing. The result of bacterial infection on the teeth is the evident …
Psoriasis is a skin disease that causes severe plaquing, scaling and thickening of the skin. It is a long term incurable disease resulting from the inflammation of the skin cells by a chemical produced by the T-lymphocytes, a special white blood cell in the blood. Over time, the inflammed skin cell reproduces itself and spreads on the skin thereby causing …