This article is related to Human Health and Disease Class 12 Notes.
Health for a long time, was considered as a state of body and mind where there was a balance of certain ‘humors’.
This is what early Greeks like Hippocrates as well as Indian Ayurveda system of medicine asserted.
It was throught that persons with ‘blackbile’ belonged to hot personality and would have fevers.
This idea was arrived at by pure reflective throught. The discovery of blood by william Harvey using experimental method and the demonstration of normal body temperature in persons with ‘blackbile’ using thermometer disproved the good humor hypothesis of health.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is not only the absence of disease or illness. It is a state of an active and energetic condition including the physical, mental, and social well being.
Health is affected by-
- Poorly balanced diet.
- Genetic Disorders.
- Stress, and anxiety.
- Infection from pathogens.
- Intake of unhealthy and unhygienic food.
- Lack of exercise and other physical activities.
Table of Contents
Common Diseases in Human
- A pathogenic bacterium known as Salmonella typhi is known to cause typhoid in humans. This fever can be confirmed by ‘Widal’ test.
- Pneumonia is caused by Streptococcus pneumoniae and ‘Hemophilus’ influenza.
- Rhinovirus, a group of virus, is known to cause one of the most of infectious ailments in humans.
- Plasmodium, a small protozoan causes malaria. Another protozoan, Entamoeba ‘histolytica’, causing amoebiasis (amoebic dysentery).
- Ascaris(an intestinal parasite) causes ascariasis.
- Wuchereriaa’, the filarial worm causes filariasis or elephantiasis.
Some of the human disease are caused by protozoans too, you might have heard about malaria, a disease man has been fighting since many years.
A disease caused by a plasmodium parasite, transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes.
The severity of malaria varies based on the species of plasmodium.plasmodium also called malaria.
AIDS
The word AIDS stands for Acquired imuuno Deficiency Syndrome. This means deficiency of immune system.
HIV causes AIDS and interferes with the body’s ability to fight infections.
The virus can be transmitted through contact with infected blood, semen or vaginal fluids.
A member of a group of viruses called retrovirus, which have an envelope enclosing the RNA genome.
They belong to the family Retroviridae of Retroviruses. Once it has infected a cell, it converts its RNA into DNA by reverse transcription. This viral DNA is then inserted into the DNA of the host cell where it starts replicating. For eg., Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV)
Prevention of AIDS
As AIDS has no cure, prevention is the best option. When someone with HIV takes effective treatment it reduces their viral load to undetectable levels. This means the level of HIV virus in the blood is so low that it cannot be detected by a test.
Infection with HIV or having AIDS is something that should not be hidden since then, the infection may spread to many more people.
Cancer
Cancer is one of the more dreaded diseases of human beings and is a major cause of death all over the globe.
Cancer refers to any one of a large number of diseases characterized by the development of abnormal cells that divide uncontrollably and have the ability to infiltrate and destroy normal body tissue. Cancer often has the ability to spread throughout your body
More than a million peoples suffer from cancer and a large number of them die from it annually. The mechanism that underlie development of cancer or Oncorgenic transformation of cell.
Cancer is the second-leading cause of death in the world. But survival rates are improving for many types of cancer, thanks to improvements in cancer screening, treatment and prevention.
In our body cell growth and differentiation is highly controlled and regulated, in cancer cells there is breakdown of these regulatory mechanism.
Causes of Cancer
Cancer is caused by changes (mutations) to the DNA within cells. The DNA inside a cell is packaged into a large number of individual genes, each of which contains a set of instructions telling the cell what functions to perform.
as well as how to grow and divide. Errors in the instructions can cause the cell to stop its normal function and may allow a cell to become cancerous.
Transformation of normal cells into cancerous neoplastic cells may be induced by physical, chemical or biological agents.
Treatment of Cancer
Cancer treatment is the use of surgery, radiation, medications and other therapies to cure a cancer, shrink a cancer or stop the progression of a cancer.
Many cancer treatments exist. Depending on your particular situation, you may receive one treatment or you may receive a combination of treatments
Biomarker Testing for Cancer Treatment.
- Chemotherapy.
- Hormone Therapy.
- Hyperthermia.
- Immunotherapy.
- Photodynamic Therapy.
- Radiation Therapy.
- Stem Cell Transplant.