The common illnesses that you get are technically types of diseases. Yikes. Disease always sounds like such a big, scary word. So let’s define it:

We’d just tell you to focus on the last three words of that definition. Makes things a bit simpler. We mean, reallY! Who can understand all that? When we talk about disease, we generally mean any condition that negatively interferes with how your mind and/or your body is functioning. 

(Think about the word dis-ease. When you have a dis-ease, your mind and/or body is not at ease. Ha! Now that’s easy to think about!)

Moving on….. The common illnesses you will read about in this post are communicable diseases. What are those?

 A communicable disease is a disease that can be passed from person, animal or object to a person—in this case, you. Think: Communicable = Community… one person gets it, the whole community can get it. Most community things are fun. This one is not.

Are there any diseases that are non-communicable? But, of course! A Non-Communicable Disease, NCD, is a disease that can NOT be transferred from person to person. Did you know, NCDs kill three out of five people world wide?  Diabetes is a NCD as is cancer and heart disease. You can read more about those in a separate post, but for now you are going to learn about the little buggers that cause illnesses… pathogens. After that you will read about a few common communicable diseases and the difference between a viral and bacterial infection. (If you want to know what protects you from all those pathogens, don’t forget to check out the Immune System link.)