Psychology
Childhood trauma and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs)
Abuse, neglect and a chaotic home raise the odds of illness in adulthood — but an ACE score is not a sentence, and safe relationships change the outcome.
27 Sept 20268 min read
Inflammation
Also known as Swelling, Sozish
Inflammation is the body's response to injury or infection: blood flow increases, fluid and immune cells arrive, and the area becomes red, warm, swollen and painful. It is a repair process, and it becomes a problem only when it persists.
Cut a finger and within minutes the vessels around the cut widen, their walls become leaky, and plasma and pour into the tissue. That produces the four signs described two thousand years ago and still used: redness, heat, swelling and pain, with loss of function as the fifth. The purpose is to isolate the damage, destroy anything infectious and begin rebuilding. Without it, wounds would not heal and infection would not be contained.
Acute and chronic
Acute inflammation arrives fast, does its work and resolves in days — a sprained ankle, a boil, a sore throat. Chronic inflammation is the same machinery left running for months or years, and it is destructive rather than restorative. It underlies , inflammatory bowel disease and psoriasis, and it contributes to , in which inflamed artery walls make a plaque more likely to tear.
Blood tests can measure it but never explain it. CRP and the ESR both rise with inflammation anywhere in the body and neither says where or why; a raised CRP in a person with fever means something is happening, not what. They are useful for tracking a known problem over time and misleading when used as a general health screen.
Treatment depends entirely on whether the inflammation is doing a job. An reduces it and the pain with it, which suits an injury or a flare. A suppresses it far more powerfully, which is the point in autoimmune disease and the danger in undiagnosed infection. Ice, rest and elevation help an acute injury without any medicine at all. The word is also used loosely in advertising to sell diets and supplements, and claims that a particular food causes or cures chronic inflammation are mostly not supported.
Where this comes up
Tests & Diagnostics
Complete Blood Count (CBC): How to Read Your Report
Line by line through a CBC report — haemoglobin, MCV, the white cell differential and platelets — with what a flagged value usually means and what it does not.
29 Aug 202612 min read
Medicines & Safety
Paracetamol: How Much Is Safe, and the Liver Risk
The safe adult maximum is 4 g in 24 hours. Above that it damages the liver, and for the first day or two an overdose causes almost no symptoms at all.
28 Aug 202611 min read
General Medicine
Fever in Adults: What It Means and When to Worry
Most fevers settle within three days. In Pakistan a fever that lasts longer needs testing for dengue, typhoid or malaria — and a few need help the same hour.
27 Aug 20269 min read
Related terms
- NSAIDNon-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, Anti-inflammatory painkillerNSAIDs are painkillers that also reduce inflammation and fever — ibuprofen, diclofenac, naproxen and aspirin among them. They work well but carry real risks to the stomach, the kidneys and the heart.
- CorticosteroidSteroid, CortisoneCorticosteroids are medicines related to cortisol, the body's own stress hormone, and they are the most powerful suppressors of inflammation in general use. They are not the muscle-building steroids of the gym, which are a different class of drug entirely.
- ArthritisJoint inflammation, Joron ka dardArthritis means pain, swelling and stiffness in a joint. It is an umbrella word covering more than a hundred conditions, of which wear-related osteoarthritis and immune-driven rheumatoid arthritis are the two commonest.
- SymptomA symptom is something a patient notices and reports — pain, nausea, tiredness. It differs from a sign, which is something a doctor can observe or measure.