Home › Diseases and Conditions

Diseases and Conditions

Learning about diseases and conditions is an important part of your health and wellness. A disease is really an irregular malady which impacts your body. It's often viewed as a medical condition involving particular signs and symptoms. A medical condition is a wide-ranging expression that encompasses all diseases and disorders. A disorder is a dysfunction or disruption of the body's normal processes.

A disease may be classified either as an infectious disease or a non-infectious disease. An infectious disease is caused by growth of a pathogen, an infectious agent, in the host. These include bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, parasites, and proteins called prions. Non-infectious diseases are non-transmissible among folks. These include autoimmune diseases, where the body mistakes a part of the body for a pathogen and attacks itself, cancers, diabetes, heart disease, asthma, kidney disease and many others.

Disorders can be classified into five categories. A physical disorder is one that can be diagnosed with a laboratory test like a chemical test, or an imaging test like an x-ray or brain scan. A mental disorder is one relating to areas or operations of the brain and nervous system. These have no lab or imaging tests and are diagnosed by behavioral signs and symptoms.

Emotional and behavioral disorders are often related to children and adolescents in a school setting. A functional disorder is one that interferes with a normal bodily process but everything appears normal when examined. A genetic disorder is caused by abnormal genes or chromosomes. These are rare and often happen before birth and may or may not be heritable.

A syndrome is collection of symptoms or diseases that often are present together. For instance, metabolic syndrome is high blood pressure, high triglycerides, high cholesterol, obesity, and high fasting blood sugar. This increases the risk of developing heart disease and diabetes.

One you know more about what disease or condition you have, you may consider a plan of therapies or treatments to cure or improve the problem. Preventative therapy is used to avoid the disease or condition. A treatment or cure is tried after illness has begun. A treatment attempts to remove or improve the medical problem, but may not produce a permanent cure. A cure reverses the condition fully. An incurable disease may still be treated.

Diseases and Conditions