My Science School

Anemia is defined as a low number of red blood cells. In a routine blood test, anemia is reported as a low hemoglobin or hematocrit. Hemoglobin is the main protein in your red blood cells. It carries oxygen, and delivers it throughout your body. If you have anemia, your hemoglobin level will be low too. If it is low enough, your tissues or organs may not get enough oxygen. 

Anemia affects more than two billion people globally, which is more than 30% of the total population. It is especially common in countries with few resources, but it also affects many people in the industrialized world. Within the U.S., anemia is the most common blood condition. An estimated three million Americans have the disorder.

Anemia can have other affects on your body in addition to feeling tired or cold. Other signs that you might be lacking in iron include having brittle or spoon-shaped nails and possible hair loss. You might find that your sense of taste has changed, or you might experience ringing in your ears.

Different types of anemia may lead to other serious problems. People with sickle cell anemia often have heart and lung complications.

 

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Bloating is a condition where your belly feels full and tight, often due to gas. When you are bloated, you feel as if you’ve eaten a big meal and there is no room in your stomach. Your stomach feels full and tight. It can be uncomfortable or painful. Your stomach may actually look bigger. It can make your clothes fit tighter.

Bloating happens when the GI tract becomes filled with air or gas. This can be caused by something as simple as the food you eat. Some foods produce more gas than others. It can also be caused by lactose intolerance (problems with dairy). 

Your doctor can generally diagnose the cause of your bloating through a physical exam in the office. He or she will ask you questions about your symptoms. They will want to know if your bloating is occasional or if it occurs all the time.

Temporary bloating is usually not serious. If it happens all the time, your doctor may order other tests. These could include an imaging test to look inside your abdomen. This could be an X-ray or CT scan.

 

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The stomach flu (gastroenteritis) is a nonspecific term for various inflammatory problems in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract.

Food allergies may produce eosinophilic gastroenteritis, a sign of which is increased eosinophils (a type of white blood cell) seen in the blood. Children with the stomach flu or gastroenteritis have similar symptoms to adults, but also may have symptoms such as refusing to drink or being very thirsty.

The main way contagious causes of the stomach flu are spread is person to person via the fecal-oral route. Individuals at most risk of catching the stomach flu are those in close association with an infant, child, or an adult that has a viral or bacterial cause of stomach flu .

Stomach flu is diagnosed in most cases without specific tests, however, tests can help define the underlying cause. Home remedies may reduce symptoms of stomach flu, including diet changes. Most people with viral or mild bacterial gastroenteritis require no treatment. Some individuals may require symptom reduction with medications but more serious bacterial infections may require antibiotic therapy.

 

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Ulcers are sores that are slow to heal or keep returning. They can take many forms and can appear both on the inside and the outside of your body.

They can be found on places of your body you can see, such as a leg ulcer found on the skin, or in places you can’t see, such as a peptic ulcer in the lining of your stomach or upper intestine. From your eye to your foot, you can get them just about anywhere on your body.

Injuries, diseases, and infections can cause them. What they look like depends on where you have them and how you got them. While some go away on their own, others cause serious problems if you don’t treat them.

 

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The stapes is the smallest and lightest bone in the human body at 3mm x 2.5 mm in size. The shape of a stirrup, it is one of three tiny bones in the middle ear, collectively known as the ossicles, that convey sound waves from the outer ear to the inner ear. The other two are the malleus (hammer) and the incus (anvil).

The stapes develops from the second pharyngeal arch during the sixth to eighth week of embryological life. The central cavity of the stapes, the obturator foramen, is due to the presence embryologically of the stapedial artery, which usually regresses in humans during normal development.

The stapes is one of three ossicles in mammals. In non-mammalian four-legged animals, the bone homologous to the stapes is usually called the columella; however, in reptiles, either term may be used. In fish, the homologous bone is called the hyomandibular, and is part of the gill arch supporting either the spiracle or the jaw, depending on the species. The equivalent term in amphibians is the pars media plectra.

The stapes appears to be relatively constant in size in different ethnic groups. In 0.01–0.02% of people, the stapedial artery does not regress, and persists in the central foramen. In this case, a pulsatile sound may be heard in the affected ear, or there may be no symptoms at all. Rarely, the stapes may be completely absent.

 

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Ever wondered what happens to the food you eat once you swallow? The digestive system will be busy at work on your dinner for the next few hours - or sometimes days - depending upon what you've eaten. This process, called digestion, allows your body to get the nutrients and energy it needs from the food you eat. So let's find out what's happened to that mouthful you just ate.

Esophagus

The esophagus is kind of like a pipe that's about 25 cm long. It moves food from the back of your throat to your stomach. But also at the back of your throat is your windpipe, which allows air to come in and out of your body. When you swallow a small ball of chewed-up food or liquids, a special flap called the epiglottis flops down over the opening of your windpipe to make sure the food enters the esophagus and not the windpipe. Once food has entered the esophagus, the muscle walls move in a wavy motion to slowly squeeze the food down through the esophagus. This takes about two or three seconds.

Liver

The nutrient-rich blood comes directly to the liver for processing. The liver filters out harmful substances or wastes, turning some of the waste into more bile. The liver even helps figure out how many nutrients will go to the rest of the body, and how many will stay behind in storage.

Small intestine

At over six metres long the small intestine isn't small at all. The small intestine is a long tube that's about 3.5 to 5 cm round, and it's packed inside beneath your stomach. The small intestine breaks down the food mixture even more, so your body can absorb all the vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and fats with a little help from three other organs: the pancreas, liver, and gallbladder.

Those organs send different juices to the first part of the small intestine. These juices help to digest food and allow the body to absorb nutrients. The pancreas makes Juices that help the body digest fats and protein. A juice from the liver called bile helps to absorb fats into the bloodstream. And the gallbladder serves as a warehouse for bile, storing it until the body needs it.

Your food may spend as long as four hours in the small intestine and will reduce to a very thin watery mixture. At the end of the journey, the nutrients from your dinner can pass from the intestine into the blood. Once in the blood, your body is closer to benefiting from the complex carbohydrates and vitamins.

Mouth

Even before you eat, when you smell a tasty food, see it, or think about it, digestion begins. Saliva begins to form in your mouth. When you do eat, the saliva breaks down the chemicals in the food, which helps make the food mushy and easy to swallow. Your tongue helps out, pushing the food around while you chew with your teeth. When you're ready to swallow, the tongue pushes a tiny bit of mushed-up food called a bolus toward the back of your throat and into the opening of your esophagus, the second part of the digestive tract.

Stomach

Your stomach is attached to the end of the esophagus. It's a sack that has three important jobs:

• To store the food you've eaten.


• To break down the food into a liquid mixture.


• To slowly empty that liquid mixture into the small intestine. The stomach is like a mixer, churning together all the small balls of food that came down the esophagus into smaller and smaller pieces. It does this with help from the strong muscles in the walls of the stomach and gastric juices that also come from the stomachs' walls. Gastrio juices also help kill bacteria that might be in the eaten food.

Large intestine

At around 7 to 10 am, the large intestine is fatter than the small intestine and it's almost the last stop on the digestive tract. Like the small intestine, it is packed into the body, and would measure about 1.5 metres long if you spread it out. After most of the nutrients are removed from the food mixture, there is waste left over - stuff your body can't use. This stuff needs to be passed out of the body.

Colon

Before the waste goes, it passes through the part of the large intestine called the colon which is where the body gets its last chance to absorb the water and some minerals into the blood. As the water leaves the waste product, what's left gets harder and harder nu it keep moving along, until it becomes a sold. Yep, it’s a poo, (also called stool or a bowel movement).

The large intestine pushes the solid waste into the rectum, the very last stop on the digestive tract. The solid waste stays here until you are ready to go to the toilet.

Looking after your digestive system

You can help your digestive system by drinking water and eating a healthy diet that Includes foods rich in fibre. High-fibre foods, like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains, make it easier for waste to pass through your system. The digestive system is a pretty important part of your body. Without it, you couldn't get the nutrients you need to grow properly and stay healthy. And next time you sit down to lunch, you know where your food goes - from start to finish!

 

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The amount of water you consume affects how well your bones can do their job.

Water brings calcium and other nutrients throughout the body, including to your bones. You may know that kidney stones are comprised mostly of calcium, and they are partly a result of not drinking enough water. 

Toxins in our body, if not removed, built up in the bones. This manifests in several problems, including inflammation, weakening, and loss in bone density. Water is needed here to wash away these toxins.

Our bones also have several of other tasks aside from providing us a skeletal structure. For example, the marrow in bones produces red blood cells, which adds strength and mass to the bones. Water plays an important role here.

These are some ways how water plays a critical role in our orthopedic health. Of course, drinking enough water isn’t an absolute measure and doesn’t guarantee to get rid of bone and joint-related problems. It isn’t a miraculous practice that assures to have everything right. However, it is one of those little steps that can take you a long way, possibly ensuring you less orthopedic problems as you get older.

 

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Dehydration occurs when you use or lose more fluid than you take in, and your body doesn't have enough water and other fluids to carry out its normal functions. If you don't replace lost fluids, you will get dehydrated.

It’s normal to lose water from your body every day by sweating, breathing, peeing, and pooping, and through tears and saliva (spit). Usually you replace the lost liquid by drinking fluids and eating foods that contain water. If you lose too much water or don’t drink and eat enough, you can get dehydrated.

People (and animals) lose water every day in the form of water vapor in the breath we exhale, and as water in our sweat, urine, and stool. Along with the water, we also lose small amounts of salts or electrolytes. Our bodies are constantly readjusting the balance between water (and salts or electrolytes) losses with fluid intake. When we lose too much water, our bodies may become out of balance or dehydrated. Most doctors divide dehydration into three stages: 1) mild, 2) moderate and 3) severe. Mild and often even moderate dehydration can be reversed or put back in balance by oral intake of fluids that contain electrolytes (or salts) that are lost during activity. If unrecognized and untreated, some instances of moderate and severe dehydration can lead to death. This article is designed to discuss dehydration in adults.

 

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In general, children and teens need about 6 to 8 cups of water a day. They should also eat lots of fresh fruits and veggies, which are full of water.

When our bodies heat up—because of a hot day or because of physical activity, for instance—the brain alerts the sweat glands to produce sweat. The body cools itself by the evaporation of sweat from the skin. If dehydrated, the body can’t sweat enough to stay cool. Water is essential in keeping bowel movements regular and helping to prevent conditions such as urinary tract infections and kidney stones.

When kids are playing or exercising vigorously, or if it's very hot outside, they'll need more liquids to make up for the fluid their bodies lose as they sweat. Depending on their size, your child could need anywhere from four to 16 ounces of water every 15 to 20 minutes during exercise.

If you're not sure if your child is drinking enough, keep an eye on how much they're urinating and what color their urine is. Well-hydrated kids will pass urine frequently and their urine will be clear. If this is not the case for your child, take it as a sign to increase their fluid intake.

 

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