Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

An agency within the US Public Health Service that provides a number of health-related services. Abbreviated FDA. The FDA’s services include inspecting food and food-processing facilities to ensure wholesomeness and safety; scrutinizing food and drugs for pets and farm animals; ensuring that cosmetics will not cause harm; monitoring the health of the nation’s blood supply;…

Any substance that is eaten to provide nutritional support for the body.

The word fontanel comes from the French fontaine for fountain. The medical term fontanel is a “soft spot” of the skull. The “soft spot” is soft precisely because the cartilage there has not yet hardened into bone between the skull bones. There are normally two fontanels, both in the midline of the skull, one (the anterior fontanel) well in front of…

A quaint old term for the application of hot packs or the substance so applied. From the Latin “fovimentum” which meant, no surprise, to “a warm application.” To “foment” means, literally, to warm or heat up. It is, figuratively, to incite. For example, to forment fear.

An infection or inflammation of the hair follicles of the skin. Inflammation of the hair follicles can occur when the skin is disrupted or inflamed due to a number of conditions, including acne, or injuries, friction from clothing, excessive sweating, or exposure to toxins. The symptoms vary and include small, red bumps or blisters around hair follicles,…

One of the B vitamins that is a key factor in the synthesis (the making) of nucleic acid (DNA and RNA). A deficiency of folic acid after birth causes a kind of anemia, namely, megaloblastic anemia in which there is a paucity of red blood cells and those that are made are unusually large and immature (so-called blast cells). Lack…

FODMAPs: an acronym for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. These are a group of sugar-related carbohydrates that have been termed “indigestible” because they are poorly broken down in the intestine and absorbed into the body. The FODMAPs are fermented by bacteria within the intestine with the production of gas and the secretion of fluid into the intestine. Lactose, the…

Also known as Multiple sclerosis (MS). Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an autoimmune inflammatory disease of the central nervous system that leads to the degeneration of nerves in the brain and spinal cord. The immune or infection-fighting system in MS patients attacks the body’s own cells, causing progressive damage in the brain and spinal cord. Symptoms of MS include Although MS was first identified…

Pertaining to a focus which in medicine may refer to:1. The point at which rays converge as, for example, in the focal point.2. A localized area of disease. A focal cancer is limited to one specific area.

Flutter is a rapid vibration or pulsation. The difference between flutter and fibrillation is that flutter is well organized while fibrillation is not. For example, atrial flutter consists of well-organized but over-rapid contractions of the atrium of the heart (usually at a rate of 250-350 contractions per minute). Atrial flutter is a serious and potentially unstable cardiac rhythm.