Skip to main content

Heath and Diseases

Health 

The word health gives us an idea of 'being well' but health is actually a state of physical, mental and social well-being.


Effect of Environment on Health


Proper health can not be achieved alone! The health of an individual also depends on their surroundings and their environment.The health depends on both- physical and social environment.

  1. Physical Environment: Factors like heat, temperature, humidity and natural calamities like storms, cyclones, floods, droughts, etc. influence health on a large scale.
  2. Social Environment: Society is an important factor affecting a person's health. Human beings live in societies, and a person's social health depends on the interaction between him and the society he lives in.

 Health depends on the following factors too:

  • Public health services/ public cleanliness: Sanitation is one of the major factor affecting health. The services must ensure removal of garbage, cleaning of drains, proper drinking water, vector and pest control, vaccination and health care. IF NOT TAKEN CARE, these things largely increase the possibility for poor health.Also, a person should take proper care of his hygiene. Personal hygiene is very important for a healthy life.
  • Economic Conditions: A balanced diet is essential for good health, but we need to earn properly in order to provide food to everyone in the family and to earn this money we need to do work. Therefore work opportunities should be made available to everyone so that the people and able to earn properly. Good economic conditions and jobs are required for maintaining good health of an individual. 

Difference between being Healthy and Disease-free

  • Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being of an individual.
  • The word 'disease' literally means being uncomfortable due to a particular cause.
  • Diseases are caused by microorganisms, improper diet or can be inherited from parents to offsprings.
  • If a person is affected by diseases his organ systems and various body part may not function properly.
  • When we talk about poor health, it does not always mean that we are suffering from a particular disease. 
  • Our health is usually affected by our physical, mental and social conditions.
  • Health is often affected by diseases. 

Symptoms of Disease

  • How will you know that your body is affected by a disease or not? Well, in the case of a disease, the functioning and sometimes the appearance of one or more body systems changes.
  • These changes give rise to the various symptoms of the disease.
  • Symptoms of a disease are the things that we feel as being something 'wrong' with the body.
  • Different symptoms which are usually established when you are affected by a disease include- a headache, cough, loose motion or wounds with pus.
  • Different diseases have different symptoms.


Types of Diseases

Cause of Diseases:

There are many causes for a disease. The causes could be categorised as follows:

  • The Immediate cause of the disease- The agent or factor that actually causes the disease is called immediate or primary cause of disease. e.g. Bacteria.
  • Contributory causes of the disease- These causes either make a person prone to catch a disease or create conditions that promote chances of diseases. e.g. Genetic difference or poor nourishment.

Based on Duration

On the basis of their duration diseases are of 2 types:

  1. Acute diseases: Acute diseases are the diseases that usually last only for short period of time. The person affected gets recovered soon and begins to live his normal life. e.g. common cold.
  2. Chronic diseases: Chronic diseases last for a long period of time Chronic diseases have a very drastic long-term effect on our health. Some chronic diseases last for the whole life. e.g. Diabetes, Elephantiasis.

Based on Occurrence or Spread

  • Infectious diseases: Infectious diseases are usually communicable diseases and can be transferred from an infected person to a healthy person. Infectious diseases are caused by microbes or microorganisms. In infectious diseases, the microbes are immediate causes. Infectious diseases are the diseases which are usually caused by micro-organisms like bacteria, virus, fungi, and protozoa. Infectious diseases are often spread from one person to another through air, food, water etc.
  • Non-infectious diseases: Non-infectious diseases are noncommunicable as they do not spread from one person to another. In non-infectious diseases, the immediate causes of disease are not the microbes. The causes are internal and non-infectious. Non-infectious are the diseases which are often caused by genetic abnormalities. e.g. Cancer.
Different treatments are used to cure infectious and non-infectious diseases.

Infectious diseases


Agents

Infectious diseases are caused by various viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoan, worms etc. Disease-causing microbes are spread through the air, water, food, sexual contact, casual physical contact ( handshakes, hugs, wrestling, etc), blood-to-blood contact, and transmitted from an infected mother to her baby.
Diseases can be spread:
  1. Through air: - Common cold, Tuberculosis, Pneumonia, etc.
  2. Through water: - Cholera, Amoebic dysentery, etc.
  3. Through vectors: -  Mosquitoes :- Malaria, Dengue, Yellow fever, etc.
  4. Through sexual contact: - Syphilis, AIDS.

Disease-causing organisms

  • Bacteria can cause diseases like typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, anthrax, pimples and peptic ulcers, etc.
  • Viruses can cause diseases like common cold, influenza, dengue fever, SARS and AIDS.
  • Fungi usually cause skin infections.
  • Protozoa causes malaria, Kala-Azar and sleeping sickness.
  • Helminth worms cause intestinal infections and elephantiasis.

Target organs

There are the different parts of the body which are attacked by infectious agents. Mode of entry of microbes specifies the site of localisation and infection. Symptoms tell us about the target organ or the organ which is infected.

  • If the symptoms are continuous coughing and breathlessness, this means the lungs are the target.
  • Jaundice is a disease which affects the liver, which is the target organ in this case.
  • If the symptoms are a headache, vomiting, fits or unconsciousness, then the brain is usually the target.

Prevention of Diseases


"Prevention is better than cure". This statement also means that prevention of diseases is better than curing them. Therefore, one must do something to prevent diseases. Two ways of prevention are general and specific ways of prevention.
General ways: General ways involve preventing exposure to various diseases spreading agents. We can prevent exposure in various ways.

  • For air-born microbes, exposure can be prevented by avoiding overcrowded places.
  • For water-borne microbes,exposure can be prevented by providing safe drinking water. 
  • For vector-borne infections, can be prevented by providing  a clean environment.
  • Our immune system also plays an important role in killing of microbes that enter our body. Proper nourishment is necessary for a better functioning of our immune system. Having proper nourishment and a proper immune system is also a kind of prevention.

Specific ways: If you suffer from a disease once, it means your body have gained prevention against the subsequent attacks by the same pathogen. You will not be affected by the same diseases again and again. Vaccination is done to prevent diseases by this way.

  • When an infection occurs for the first time, our immune system responds to it in a specific way.
  • Next time if the same microbe enters our body, the immune system responds much powerfully eliminating the infection more quickly than the first time.
  • So, immunisation is often done to prevent diseases.
  • Vaccines are used to prevent many diseases nowadays and are available for a wide range of diseases.
  • Public health program for childhood immunisation in order to prevent infectious diseases are often run by the government.
  • People are vaccinated against tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, measles, polio, etc.

AIDS

AIDS is a viral disease caused by a virus named Human Immuno Deficiency Virus or HIV.  HIV attacks the immune system of an individual and hence he cannot fight back many diseases. HIV finally causes death.



Enjoy your high school with - High School Pedia : www.highschoolpedia.com

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Animal and Plant Cells

 Cells Cells are the basic functional, biological and structural unit of life. The word cell is a Latin word meaning ‘small room’. Cells are also known as building blocks of life.  The branch of science that deals with the form, structure, and composition of a cell is known as Cytology. All organisms around us are made up of cells. Bacteria, ameba, paramecium, algae, fungi, plants and animals are made up of cells.  Cells together form tissues. And tissue together makes an organ. History Of Cell The cell was discovered by Robert Hooke in 1665. He assembled a simple microscope and observed a very thin slice of cork under his primitive microscope. The cork was obtained from the outer covering of a tree called bark. Robert Hooke observed many little-partitioned boxes or compartments in the cork slice. These boxes appeared like a honey-comb. He termed these boxes as the cell. He also noticed that one box was separated from another by a wa...
23 comments
Read more

Important Mathematical Constants!

Important Mathematical Constants Mathematical constants are those numbers that are special and interesting because they come up in the various fields of mathematics like geometry, calculus etc. These mathematical constants are usually named after the person who discovered it and they are represented by a symbol that is usually picked up from the Greek alphabet. Mathematical constants are by definition very important. In this article we will take a look at certain mathematical constants that are more commonplace than others. 1.       Ï€ (pi) or Archimedes constant (~3.14159):   Ï€ is defined as the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. This is probably the most popular mathematical constant. So Ï€ is the circumference of the circle whose diameter is 1 unit. You might have seen it popping up when calculating the area of a circle (Ï€r 2 ) or the circumference of a circle (2Ï€r). It has many uses throughout mathematics from calcula...
4 comments
Read more

Autonomous Cars

The Problem with Self-Driving Cars Every year, so many people die in car accidents, most of them caused because of the driver's negligence. Exorbitant amounts of money are spent just to fund awareness campaigns and stop people from “drinking and driving”. All of this after the fact that the technology for self-driving cars is in the last stages of development. Why are self-driving cars not the next big thing yet? Companies like Tesla, Uber and heck, even Google are racing to be the next innovator of autonomous cars. “This is stupid… Obviously, the cars are expensive.” See that’s the point, these cars are not ridiculously expensive (at least not for people who own an iPhone X). “Well then we obviously don’t have the requisite technology” That is partially true but trust me, the cars are way closer technology-wise than you may think. The biggest problem with autonomous cars is (insert drumroll) “A Moral Dilemma”. Disappointed? Just hear me out. Imagine ...
Post a Comment
Read more

SETS, RELATIONS & FUNCTIONS

SETS, RELATIONS & FUNCTIONS Sets are a fundamental part of mathematics and it’s knowledge is very important in present. It defines the concepts of relation and functions. These functions are also very essential for present day maths. SETS Sets are denoted by capital letters. They are similar to matrices whose elements are denoted by small letters. But in sets an element comes only at once. Sets are matrices which give a sense of belonging. This sense of belongingness is represented by  ∈   .We can write anything in a set like rivers of India, Wonders of the World .etc.  For an example let there be a set of positive single digit. Let the set be denoted as A Therefore, 8 ∈ A  Also we can write, 17 ∈ A Set can be represented by two types  ROSTER In roster form we write elements in curly brackets and separate them with comma.  If there be set of positive integers less than 10. Therefore the set will be {1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9}  SE...
1 comment
Read more

Android Versions Named After Sweet

Have you ever thought why are Android versions always named after sweet names ?? Everytime a new Android version is launched its name is kept after a sweet name. Many people have researched about this topic and many have asked Google also. Have you ever tried to find out the core reason behind this? If not then you would find the answer here . First of all let us first see what Google says about this : In 2008 i.e. the year when Android was launched a reporter asked the reason for the same. At that time Google said “It’s kind of like an internal team thing, and we prefer to be a little bit — how should I say — a bit inscrutable in the matter, I’ll say,” said Randall Sarafa, a Google spokesman. “The obvious thing is that, yeah, the Android platform releases, they go by dessert names and by alphabetical order for the most part."
14 comments
Read more

Levitation 2

LEVITATION II To be completely honest I was going to start this with a pun. I did think of one but it doesn’t float… I am sorry I just had to. Anyway, this is the second part to the article on super cool ways of making things levitate. Go check the first part out if you haven’t already. Actually, the first part may have become repulsive with all the magnets and stuff, but I promise this will be more attractive. Get it? No? I’ll stop now. I am just going to jump straight into it. 1.    Electrostatic Levitation I know you are probably sick and tired of magnets but they are the best way you know… This method is somewhat similar. You remember that cool science experiment you did with two straws attracting or repulsing each other based on their charge? So basically using the same principle we can make a charged object levitate. But before you try it, let me tell you it won’t be easy. Even impossible according to our Mr. Earnshaw. He even made a law (th...
4 comments
Read more

High School Pedia

It is an initiative by some students to spread the light of knowledge to everyone and everywhere. It was started in the year 2015 and has grown rapidly in the past few months. By the means of this website, we try to provide information on every topic that we can reach up to. You can find different articles on this website. All these articles are written in simple language so that everyone can understand it and learn from it. We at High School Pedia believe in creative learning and this is the reason why we add our own edited graphical representations in every article. Once a very learned man said, “Knowledge increases by not keeping it to yourself but by sharing it with others”. And we follow the same motto “Share to Learn”. The team of High School Pedia tries its best to provide you with the best and original content. Unlike many other websites, High School Pedia is famous for its original and inspiring content.
2 comments
Read more