Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Medical Terms

When I first thought of "medical terms" I panicked, because I knew that I would be learning a big mess of words that I had no idea what they meant.  When the words were thrown at me and explained I calmed down, because they were words that I had at least heard before even if I didn't know the meaning.  Some of them were very easy to infer, such as medial.  This means medium, and when you say m-e-d-i-a-l, it is very easy to get medium out of it.  Metabolism is another very familiar word to us.  When people talk about eating the first word that often comes to mind is metabolism because without it, our body's would not be able to handle food properly and we would be much over weight.  This is why people often notice thin people as having a "good metabolism".  When you heard the word distal, what often comes to mind? Distance I would hope.  Well that is exactly right, when a body part is distal, that means that it is far away from what you are comparing it to.  An example would be your hand to your shoulder.  There is a far distance between therefore, they are distal.  The opposite of distal would be proximal. Which you can infer would be close together if you know what distal means.  An example would be your arm to your shoulder, they are very close together therefore, they are proximal.
When I think of superficial I think of not real or not being able to see it, but in medical terms it is the exact opposite, and this is how I remember what it is.  It means "on the surface", which would be visible to us.  The opposite of superficial in medical terms would be deep, this means exactly what it sounds like, things that are not visible to the eye.  Such as, internal organs, bones, etc. 
There are also many medical regions, two that are really easy to remember are superior and inferior. Superior is up by the head and interior is by the feet.  So your neck would be superior and your feet legs would be inferior.  
After looking at all this mess of terms, it really wasn't hard to understand.  I connected them with myself and made ways for me to remember them.
  

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