Health: The Ultimate Treasure - Vocabulary Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering health concepts, diseases, transmission methods, prevention strategies, key historical figures, and scientific terms from Grade 8 Science Chapter 3.

Health (WHO Definition)

A state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease.

Dinacharya

The daily routine in Ayurveda that helps maintain the balance of body, mind, and surroundings.

Ritucharya

The seasonal routine in Ayurveda that helps maintain the balance of body, mind, and surroundings.

Prakriti

An individual's unique body constitution in Ayurveda.

Air Quality Index (AQI)

A metric that indicates how clean or polluted the air is in a specific environment.

Symptom

A subjective feeling of being unwell experienced by a patient, such as pain, tiredness, or dizziness.

Sign

An objective indication of illness that can be directly observed or measured, such as fever, rash, high blood pressure, or swelling.

Disease

A condition affecting the normal functioning of the body or mind, occurring when organs or organ systems stop functioning properly.

Pathogens

Disease-causing organisms, including bacteria, viruses, fungi, worms, and protozoa.

Non-communicable Diseases (NCDs)

Diseases that are not caused by pathogens and do not spread from person to person, usually linked to lifestyle, diet, or environment.

Communicable Diseases

Diseases caused by pathogens that can spread from one person to another through air, water, food, contact, or vectors.

Vectors

Insects, such as mosquitos and houseflies, that carry and transmit pathogens from one host to another.

Parasites

Organisms that live in or on another living being and feed on its nutrients.

Deficiency Diseases

Non-communicable diseases caused by a lack of specific nutrients in the diet, such as scurvy, anaemia, and goitre.

Chronic Diseases

Diseases that persist for a long period of time, specifically lasting more than $3\text{ months}$.

Immunity

The natural ability of the body to fight against diseases.

Acquired Immunity

Protection against a disease that is developed after exposure to a pathogen or a vaccine.

Vaccine

A preparation containing weakened, dead, or harmless parts of a pathogen (or instructions to create them) that trains the immune system to recognize and fight specific germs.

Variolation

A traditional Indian practice of protection against smallpox that involved using material from a smallpox sore to scratch the skin and induce a mild infection.

Teekedaars

Practitioners in traditional India who performed the method of variolation to protect people against smallpox.

Edward Jenner

The English doctor who discovered in the late 1700s that cowpox infection conferred resistance against smallpox, leading to the creation of the first vaccine.

Kamal Ranadive

A pioneering biomedical researcher ($1917\text{--}2001$) who studied how hormones, viruses, tobacco, diet, and pollution are linked to cancer.

Maharaj Kishan Bhan

An Indian doctor and scientist who served as Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology and played a key role in developing the Rotavirus vaccine.

Antibiotics

Medicines that treat bacterial infections by killing bacteria through targeting structures specific to bacterial cells.

Alexander Fleming

The bacteriologist from London who discovered penicillin, the first antibiotic, in $1928$.

Antibiotic Resistance

A phenomenon where bacteria survive and multiply despite treatment with antibiotics that previously killed them.

Malaria

An insect-transmitted disease caused by protozoa that affects skin and blood, causing high fever, profuse sweating, and periodic chills.

Dengue Fever

A viral disease transmitted by mosquitos, also known as break bone fever, causing high fever, severe muscle and joint pain, headache, and nausea.

Tuberculosis (TB)

A bacterial disease spread through the air that infects the lungs, causing persistent cough, fever, fatigue, loss of appetite, and night sweats.

Ascariasis

An intestinal infection caused by roundworms, leading to worms in stool, loss of appetite, poor growth, diarrhoea, weight loss, and anaemia.