Marijuana dispensaries offer customers and patients a variety of options for either medical or recreational use. These decisions can be overwhelming for someone who’s not familiar with the industry lingo. One decision a consumer might have to make is what strain (“a group of plants distinguished from other plants of the variety to which it belongs by some intrinsic quality”) of cannabis to purchase. Although there …
Nothing gets our blood pumping like using the dictionary and thesaurus to find cool new words. (Such excitement!) But we’ve got to keep those beats under control, as we’re about to share a medical term you may want to know. If you’re the kind of person who must keep a finger on the pulse of fancy medical jargon, then take a look below! In medicine, …
While we try to be careful, many of us have suffered a bruise every now and again. Bruises can result from many sources, such as accidental contact with table legs or awkward meetings of thumbs and hammers. But, medically speaking, what exactly is a bruise, and what medical terms do the professionals use to talk about bruises? A bruise is a discoloration that results from …
While new words can make us swoon, they are unlikely to cause us to faint or lose consciousness. But as word lovers we can examine the word faint itself. What exactly is fainting, and what is the more formal medical term for it? In medicine, the term syncope is used to refer to fainting. Generally, this term is used to specifically refer to the act …
Using our handy thesaurus or dictionary, you can gobble up a smorgasbord of new words to satiate your hunger for a wider vocabulary. Before your hearty meal is finished, you might be curious to know if there are actually any synonyms for the word burping. Is there some kind of fancy medical term to refer to expelling gas through the mouth? If you won’t be …
Encountering a new word might make you anxious, but with a helpful dictionary or thesaurus nearby, learning new words is no sweat. Speaking of sweat, you may be wondering what medical term is used to refer to sweating or an abnormal amount of sweat. Rather than sweat the small stuff, we decided to investigate the answer to this clammy conundrum. Cool off by taking a …
It’s always fun to learn new things and learning a cool new word can scratch that itch of curiosity you might have. Speaking of itch, you may be wondering what medical term is used to refer to itchiness or really itchy skin. Itching to solve this mystery? We have just the educational aloe vera you are looking for—and you’ll learn a few more dermatological terms …
When it comes to disease, we’re more and more aware of symptoms, prevention, treatments, and long-term effects. But there’s another, often less-considered factor that can have far-reaching consequences for public health: a disease’s name. What we call a disease—both popularly and officially—can affect how people perceive it, whether they understand how its spread can be prevented, and whether they seek treatment for it. The fact …
Diagnosis and prognosis can be scary words—and confusing ones. But once you understand the difference, they can actually provide reassurance. That’s because one is an explanation of what exactly is wrong and one is a prediction of how things will turn out. In this article, we’ll examine the difference between a diagnosis and a prognosis in medicine as well as in general use. In medicine, …
Double, double, toil and trouble! Witches cackle as their cauldrons bubble. Spiders creep. Black cats howl. Ghosts and spirits are on the prowl. All sorts of nasty things go in the witches’ brew. But the most important ingredient of all just might be… you! Spooky! This classic scene of malevolent madams making a most mysterious mixture entered our cultural imagination thanks to William Shakespeare’s Macbeth. …
COVID-19 has set off many unprecedented events that will most likely change the world forever. Fortunately, they haven’t all been bad: the virus led to the remarkable development of vaccines at a pace and scale the likes of which have never before been seen in history. Both the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and the Moderna vaccine use a relatively new technology that has been approved for the …
Surely, you’ve heard of placebo before. Wait, no … not that Placebo … not the late ’90s British band. We mean the dummy drug that, despite not having any pharmacological property, can still make you feel better—pretty much like the rock band, right? Well, you might not know that placebo has an evil twin. Its name is nocebo, and it’s the bad guy. At first …