Tag Archives: Vitamin D Deficiency

What Is Crohn’s Disease? Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease characterized by patchy inflamed areas involving the full thickness of the intestinal wall that can occur anywhere in the intestinal tract, in addition to, mucosal disease. In Crohn’s disease ...

What Is Primary Addison’s Disease? Addison’s disease is an autoimmune destruction of the adrenal glands by autoantibodies that target the adrenal cortex, or outer part of these glands, and is characterized by a slow progressive failure of the adrenal glands ...

What Is Calcium? Calcium is the most abundant mineral in the body, with 99% residing in teeth and bones where it constitutes 40% of skeletal bone weight along with 45% phosphorus. As a component of hard tissues, calcium fulfills a ...

What Is Obesity? Obesity is an inflammatory metabolic disorder that is characterized by body mass index greater than 30% resulting from excessive body fat stored in adipose tissue. Q: What is body fat? A: Body fat is part of the body ...

What Is Increased Susceptibility To Tuberculosis? Tuberculosis (TB), is an infectious disease caused by a bacteria called mycobacterium tuberculosis. It is characterized by chronic bacterial infection most commonly affecting lungs that develops in stages. Increased susceptibility to tuberculosis menas the person’s ...

What Is Vitamin D? Vitamin D is the principle regulator of calcium homeostasis (balance) in the body.  This “vitamin” is really a prohormone, meaning it acts like a hormone but is not. Vitamin D does, however, contain cholesterol in its molecular ...

What Is Muscle Weakness? Muscle weakness is the impaired status of muscle function characterized by decreased or low muscle strength and inability to perform normal work such as lifting a pot off the stove. Q: How do muscles work? A: ...

What Is Multiple Sclerosis? Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system characterized by patchy inflammation of the myelin sheath surrounding nerve cells that produces multiple and varied neurologic symptoms and signs due to demyelination. Q: What ...

What Is Chronic Muscle Pain And Tenderness? Muscle pain and tenderness, also called myalgia, is a disorder of muscle tissue. Muscle pain that is ongoing or chronic can result from a variety of disorders, infections, overuse, injury, as an unwanted ...

What Is Alopecia Areata? Alopecia areata is an autoimmune attack on hair follicles characterized by sudden hair loss involving scalp or beard, although any hairy area may be affected. Areas of hair loss have a patchy pattern with sharply defined ...

What Is Tetany? Tetany is a painful feature of low blood calcium or low blood magnesium causing hyperexcitability of all nerves which in turn stimulates involuntary sudden, intermittent and repetitious tonic spasms of muscles. Tonic spasms are steady rather than jerky. Causes include ...

What Are Sperm Abnormalities? Sperm abnormalities are the result of gonadal dysfunction (testicles) characterized by inability to either produce sperm or to produce viable sperm or mobile sperm which results in prohibiting fertilization of the female ovum. Q: How are sperm ...

What Is Psoriatic Arthritis? Psoriatic arthritis is a joint manifestation of psoriasis, a systemic autoimmune disease, characterized by asymmetric involvement in one or more joints, especially affecting the distal phalangeal joints of fingers and toes (joints nearest nails). In some ...

What Is Laryngospasm? Laryngospasm is an acute disorder of the larynx that is characterized by life-threatening spasms of the muscles of the larynx located in the throat. Laryngospasm is a rare feature of hypocalcemia (low blood calcium level) characterized by ...

What Is Hypocalcemia? Hypocalcemia, or low plasma calcium, means the level of calcium in blood is too low to meet metabolic needs of the body for calcium. Low blood calcium is characterized by bone and tooth demineralization (loss of calcium ...