Intellect PlusHealth, medicine and disease
991 cards. Each one is a 40-second story with a five-minute read behind it. Page 17 of 17.
Addiction rewires control, not just willpowerTwin studies put heritability of alcohol use disorder near half, with similar figures for other drugs. Diagnostic manuals prefer substance use disorder over the loaded word addict…
Two-thirds of daily deaths track age-related causesOf roughly 150,000 people who die each day worldwide, about 100,000 die from ageing-linked disease. Reaction time may slow, yet vocabulary often holds; leading theories still spli…
Ethanol is humanity’s second-favorite psychoactive drugOnly caffeine outranks alcohol worldwide. Natufian beer goes back at least 13,000 years, global beverage sales topped US$1.5 trillion in 2017, and ethanol still acts as a brain de…
A normal liver clears only about eight grams of ethanol hourlyThat equals one British standard unit—and damaged livers run slower. Intoxication usually starts after two or more drinks; legal BAC cutoffs often sit between 0.025 and 0.080 perc…- WHO counted 283 million people with alcohol use disordersThat 2016 estimate sits beside a word coined in 1852 that clinics now often avoid. Genes and environment share the risk roughly equally, and a first-degree relative with the disor…
Allergy means harmless things treated as invadersIgE antibodies tag pollen, food, or latex, then mast cells dump histamine. Clemens von Pirquet coined the word in 1906. In rich countries roughly one in five people get allergic r…
If a therapy works, it usually stops being alternativeAlternative medicine promises healing without the scientific method’s usual proofs—plausibility, controlled trials, and repeatable benefit. History’s pattern is blunt: methods tha…
Alzheimer’s still has no treatment that reverses itIt drives about 60–70 percent of dementia cases. Roughly 50 million people lived with it worldwide by 2020, yet medicines only ease symptoms for a time. Plaques and tangles build …
Amphetamine treats ADHD—and can also hijack rewardLazăr Edeleanu isolated the chemical in 1887; medicine adopted it in the late 1920s as Benzedrine. Today it is first-line for ADHD and narcolepsy, while recreational megadoses ris…
Surgeons name amputations by the joint they spareBelow-knee and above-knee cuts dominate major lower-limb work, while Chopart, Lisfranc, and Syme label subtler foot and ankle levels. Rotationplasty even flips the foot so an ankl…
Painkillers dull pain without erasing all sensationThat is the conceptual line between analgesics and anesthetics. Greeks gave us the word—without pain—and before the twentieth century English speakers often said anodynes. Today t…- Anemia is the world’s most common blood disorderIt affects roughly one-fifth to one-third of people globally. Iron deficiency alone touches nearly a billion, and hemoglobin cutoffs differ by sex and pregnancy—under 130 g/L for …
Anesthesia is a reversible shutdown, not mere sleepClinicians carefully dial hypnosis, analgesia, amnesia, and muscle relaxation to fit each surgical procedure and each patient. General anesthesia erases awareness entirely; sedati…
An aneurysm is a ballooning weak spot in a vessel wallAs the bulge grows, rupture risk rises toward uncontrolled bleeding. True aneurysms involve all three arterial wall layers; false ones are contained leaks beside the vessel. The d…
Anthrax’s black scar named the disease after coalGreek anthrax meant coal, echoing the painless black eschar of cutaneous infection. Robert Koch identified Bacillus anthracis as the cause; globally at least two thousand human ca…
Nubians drank tetracycline centuries before FlemingChemical traces in skeletons from northern Sudan, about 350 to 550 CE, show systematic tetracycline intake—likely from Streptomyces-fermented grain beer. Antibiotics remade twenti…
Anxiety disorders hit nearly three in ten adults everThey rank second only to depression among mental disorders worldwide, with about 5.8 percent of people affected at any moment. Clinically, anxiety is dread without a clear, contro…
Anatomists restrict “arm” to shoulder-to-elbow onlyEveryday speech calls the whole upper limb an arm. Strict anatomy reserves the word for the humerus segment between shoulder and elbow; beyond that lies forearm, then hand—and a r…
Arthritis means joint cartilage worn until bone grindsPain and stiffness follow; swelling, warmth, and lost motion often join. Osteoarthritis tops the list at over 3.8 percent of people, rheumatoid arthritis about 0.24 percent—yet in…
Aspirin began as willow bark’s synthetic cousinSalicin from Salix trees has been used for at least 2,400 years. Bayer branded acetylsalicylic acid “Aspirin” by 1899; today humans swallow an estimated 40,000 tonnes yearly—some …
Asthma has no cure, yet most flares are controllableIn 2023 it affected an estimated 363 million people and caused about 442,000 deaths, mostly in lower-income countries. Airways tighten and mucus thickens when triggers hit—an anci…
ADHD sits at the extreme low end of self-regulationTwin and genetic work put heritability near 70–80 percent. It is not a social fashion of childhood: environmental hits act early—prenatal or soon after birth—and there is no biolo…
WHO estimates about one in a hundred children are autisticFigures for 2012–2021 put childhood diagnosis near one percent, and the share is climbing with broader criteria and awareness rather than a sudden biological jump. Autism is highl…
Autoimmunity turns the adaptive immune system inwardMore than eighty recognized diseases—possibly over a hundred—follow that misfire. A UK study found about one in ten people affected, women more often than men. Fatigue is not a so…
Ayurveda mixes ancient surgery with modern pseudoscience labelsUp to 80 percent of people in India and Nepal report using it. Classical texts taught rhinoplasty and cataract work, yet today’s overviews call the theory pseudoscientific—and som…
Han officials once got a bathing holiday every five daysFrom Shang cauldrons three millennia ago to Roman thermae with libraries, washing has been hygiene, ritual, medicine, and social theater. Indian grihya sutras from about 500 BCE e…- Benzodiazepines were the world’s top prescriptions by 1977Leo Sternbach stumbled onto chlordiazepoxide in 1955; Librium arrived in 1960 and Valium followed in 1963. They calm by boosting GABA at GABAA receptors—useful for a few weeks, an…
Biopsy means taking living tissue for a closer lookThe Greek roots say life plus sight. Ernest Besnier coined biopsie in 1879, but Abulcasis was already needling thyroid goiters around the eleventh century. Today pathologists read…- “Normal” blood pressure still depends who you askAmerican AHA/ACC guidance wants adults under 120/80 mmHg at rest; European ESC prefers under 120/70 instead. Global age-standardized averages have hovered near 127/79 in men and 1…
Blood tests are medicine’s most common lab windowA vein draw or fingerstick samples a fluid that visits every organ, so chemistry and cell counts reveal disease, drugs, minerals, and organ function. Panels bundle many assays fro…- Modern transfusion prefers parts of blood, not the wholeRed cells, plasma, platelets, and clotting factors travel separately; white cells almost never do. Triggers once sat near 100 g/L hemoglobin; evidence now often waits until about …