Pathophysiology, Vital Signs, and Bedside Diagnosis.
Let us not forget about all those basic medical sciences but get on with "real" medicine. With the basics behind you, learn the real facts, signs and symptoms of a sundry of diseases and disorders. Learn to know the important conditions in medicine and to diagnose them by recognizing their outstanding signs and symptoms.
Physical signs are the footprints of disease. And like footprints, they yield important diagnostic clues to those who can recognize and interpret them. Most diagnoses used to be made as the patient recounts his history, and the rest when the physician performs the physical exam. Despite modern medicine's fascination with technology, the skill of gleaning information by observing a patient -- by watching him walk, or sit, or smile -- is as critical today as it was during the time of Robert Koch who developed the single germ-infection theory.
ELECTRODERMATOGRAMS
Electrodermatography is the recording of the electrical resistance of the skin. Electrocardiography, also called an EKG or ECG, is a test that detects and records the electrical activity of the heart. An electroencephalograph records the electrical activity of the brain. In skin conductance, an electrodermographer imposes an imperceptible current across the skin and measures how it travels through the skin. The electrodermatogram (EDG) is derived by a particular method of measuring skin resistance.
Electrodermatography studies today are confined to microresponses to body sites confined to 2-3 mm spots using an ultrasenstive detector of less than 1.5 volts on the order of 100 microamperes using a D'Arsonval meter. The basic concept for all of today's ElectroDermal Screening [EDS] devices was the original invention of Dr. Reinhardt Voll, who in the 1950s, discovered that the electrical skin resistance of the human body is not homogenous and that inner ogran activity influences skin resistance over the body which may be examined as micro-focalized electrical fields. The same research during this period was being carried out by Dr. Maurice Mussat in France, and Dr. Nakatani in Japan. Nakatani is credited for the discovery of Ryodoten or Electropermeable Points (EPP). Nakatani and Voll both discovered that the number of electro permeable points varied with any disease process. Nakatani called these Responsive Ryodo-points or Reactive Electropermeable points (REPPs).
Measuring these points is a great assistance in the evaluation of the patient's signs and symptoms. More than 300 points have been mapped out and verified clinically. According to Croon (1960) there are very small areas of skin (two millimeters in diameter) called reaction points, which constitute "neural reflections of intracerebral autonomic nervous junctions of corresponding organs and segments". H. Heine in 1987 histologically pointed out the morphology of the acupuncture points as perforation of fascides of the connecting tissue-vessel-nerves of the superficial fascia of the body and facilitated this way a physical explanation for the electric measurement of acupuncture. Thereby the relation between skin points and distant organs could be understood.
BIOIMPEDANCE TESTING
Bioelectrical impedance analysis is the study of the electrical properties of biological material and its change over conductance and time. This includes humans, animals, fish, plants, vegetables, fruits and anything living which has the cell as the basis of life.
BIA studies cell health. BIA provides us information about nutrition, cellular sodium/potassium balance and thus the state of anergy vs. energy (Gerson), pre-cancerous states, defective nutrition, lymphedema, etc.
Electrical properties of cells and tissues have been described since 1871. The first breakthrough in electrocardiology was made by the Dutch scientist Willem Einthoven, who in 1903 developed series string galvanometers that he used to build the first EKG machine.
BIA proper is the clinical assessment of tissue and fluid compartments in the human body. Simply explained, BIA measures the impedance or resistance of an electrical current as it travels through the body's water that is found in muscle and fat. A normal distribution of tissue and fluid in the body is associated with high immunological function and longevity. Healthy cells can store energy and have high phase angles whereas unhealthy cells have low phase angles. A body that stores energy easily has high reactance and a body that stores energy poorly has low reactance. Reactance is a measure of the cells' ability to store energy.
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