Asthma is a kind of inflammatory disease that affects the airways leading to the lungs. These airways become narrow and swollen, making it difficult to breathe. Asthma can also trigger other aggravating symptoms, such as coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath. Usually, when a person breathes, the air enters through the nose and goes down the throat into the airways and eventually the lungs.

A migraine is essentially a debilitating headache that affects many people in the country. In this condition, the intense throbbing, pulsing pain that is felt on one side of the head might be accompanied by discomfort too, when one is exposed to light and/or sound. Some people may suffer from additional symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, numbness, tingling, and sometimes, even experience difficulty with speaking.

Eczema is a common skin condition that occurs in both kids and adults. Typically, it is a chronic condition that causes occasional flare-ups. The skin becomes itchy, red, and rough. The itchiness can appear in any part of the body, but it generally appears on the hands, legs, feet, upper chest, neck, and the elbow and knee bends.

Plaque psoriasis is an autoimmune condition in which symptoms are easy to identify and hard to ignore as they can cause intense irritation. They usually appear around joints like the elbows and knees, the scalp, and the trunk. This condition is most commonly diagnosed among men and women between the ages of 18 and 25.

Rheumatoid arthritis is one of the common types of arthritis and affects millions of people in the country. An autoimmune disease, it causes joint pain and damage due to the immune system mistakenly attacking the body’s tissues. The inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis affects the tissue that lines the joints and is called synovium.

Scalp psoriasis is an autoimmune disease that makes the skin cells grow rapidly. This rapid growth causes inflammation, itching, irritation, and red and scaly patches on the scalp. In some cases, scalp psoriasis also spreads to the forehead, lower back, elbows, nape, and internal areas of the ears. It can also lead to hair loss.

Ulcerative colitis is a condition that causes inflammation in the linings of the large intestine or the rectum, or in some cases, both. About 750,000 people in the US are diagnosed with this condition every year. The number of undiagnosed cases, however, are still high. Here is everything you need to know about the condition, so that you can spot symptoms early on and get the treatment you need.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory disease that affects the lungs by obstructing the airflow. Chronic bronchitis and emphysema are two conditions that play a big role in COPD and they both occur together usually. The main reason for COPD is smoking and the inhalation of other irritating gases.

Hepatitis C is a viral liver infection, leading to inflammation and chronic damage to the organ. The hepatitis C virus (HCV) is the causal organism of this disease. There are five stages of this infection- incubation period (time between the contact with the virus and the appearance of symptoms), acute hepatitis C (short-term illness lasting for six months), chronic hepatitis C (long-term infection), cirrhosis (scarring and severe inflammation of the liver), and liver cancer (malignancy in the liver).

Macular degeneration is an age-related ocular ailment where light-sensitive retinal cells get damaged over time. It usually develops after 60 years and can lead to severe or permanent vision loss. Patients usually complain of the appearance of dark spots or blurred vision, as the nerve tissue in the macular region (small area in the center of the retina) becomes degenerated.

Diabetes mellitus or diabetes is a metabolic condition that affects the body’s ability to process blood sugar. Insulin transfers the sugar from the blood to the body’s cells so that it can be used for generating energy, but diabetes leads to the body either not producing adequate insulin or being unable to use the insulin produced effectively.