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Most are non-infectious, although there are some non-communicable infectious diseases, such as parasitic diseases in which the parasite's life cycle does not include direct host-to-host transmission. The four main NCDs that are the leading causes of death globally are cardiovascular disease, cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, and diabetes.
Some popular topics that are covered by medical anthropology are mental health, sexual health, pregnancy and birth, aging, addiction, nutrition, disabilities, infectious disease, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), global epidemics and disaster management. [citation needed]
Infectious diseases are sometimes called contagious diseases when they are easily transmitted by contact with an ill person or their secretions (e.g., influenza). Thus, a contagious disease is a subset of infectious disease that is especially infective or easily transmitted. All contagious diseases are infectious, but not vice versa.
narrow definition of health: that a state of health is always the absence of a definable illness; individualistic: that sources of ill health are always in the individual, and not the environment which health occurs; treatment versus prevention: that the focus of health is on diagnosis and treatment of illness, not prevention
Recent advances in psychological, medical, and physiological research have led to a new way of thinking about health and illness. This conceptualization, which has been labeled the biopsychosocial model, views health and illness as the product of a combination of factors including biological characteristics (e.g., genetic predisposition), behavioral factors (e.g., lifestyle, stress, health ...
A representation by Robert Seymour of the cholera epidemic depicts the spread of the disease in the form of poisonous air.. The miasma theory was the predominant theory of disease transmission before the germ theory took hold towards the end of the 19th century; it is no longer accepted as a correct explanation for disease by the scientific community.
Sickness behavior is a motivational state that reorganizes the organism's priorities to cope with infectious pathogens. [8] [9] It has been suggested as relevant to understanding depression, [10] and some aspects of the suffering that occurs in cancer.
For example, influenza is classified as an infectious disease because it is caused by a virus, and it is classified as a respiratory infection because the virus infects and damages certain tissues in the respiratory tract. The more that is known about the disease, the more ways the disease can be classified nosologically.