Anatomy: What your body looks like, and the organs it contains, makes up its anatomy (structure). Modern science uses imaging techniques to see the body's gross (large) structures in great detail. Microscopes are used to see the anatomy of smaller parts of the body, such as cells and tissues. As you are being diagnosed by Western conventional medicine, your cells and organs will be examined for anatomical changes to gather clues about what is happening inside of your body.
Applicability: It is tempting to apply positive research findings to your diagnosis. But before you use the "cut and paste" approach, please ask yourself how similar you are to the people (or sample) in the study. Things like gender, age, race, diet, lifestyle, socioeconomic background, education, occupation, geographic location, activity level, other medical conditions, and many other factors (which may not have been considered) could play a role in explaining why these people had positive results using a particular herb, drug, surgery, or other therapy. The "inclusion" and "exclusion" criteria in the methodology section will give you information about who participated in the study. Are they like you? And does it matter to you?
Browsing: It's the same pattern, whether you're walking through a large store, or browsing on the Web, you're using a somewhat random way of locating something, where one thing can lead to another. When you go to the web to find information, your curiosity can easily make you spend hours following the trail of links from one document to another. This is not the most focused way to find information, but on the other hand, you might bump into something interesting along the way.
Chronic Disease: A chronic disease has been with you for a long time: months to years. The opposite is true of an acute condition, which clears up within days.
Clinical Importance: Published research results may show statistical significance (the numbers between treatment groups show a difference between them), but that doesn't mean the study applies to your specific case. The bottom line for you is, "Will this research result make a difference in my clinical care? Will applying this result to myself be worth it to me, in terms of time, costs, availability, and side effects?"
Clinical Trial: This is also called Randomized Controlled Clinical Trial, or Randomized Double-blinded Clinical Trial. This is considered the "gold standard" of Western research because it leaves little room for chance or bias to influence the results. A basic question is asked, such as, "Which of two therapies provides better clinical results?" or "Does this new therapy work better than the old one?"
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) (see below) cannot always use clinical trials, for various reasons, and different research methods are used to provide evidence of therapeutic usefulness for herbs, supplements, and non-conventional healing modalities.
Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM): This designation lets you know that a non-traditional or unconventional, or not widely accepted, approach to healing is involved. The word "complementary" tells you that it is being used in addition to another therapy, and "alternative" indicates that it is used instead of another therapy. It is interesting to note that what is considered CAM in one country may be considered mainstream in other cultures. For example, acupuncture is a CAM therapy in the U.S. while being accepted as mainstream in China.
Co-existing Condition: It is possible to be dealing with 2 diseases at the same time. They may influence each other, and present problems in medication or treatment. It is important to tell us if you have co-existing conditions, because we need to put that information into our search strategy.
Conventional Medicine: Conventional medical practices, also called allopathic, are standard in Western cultures, meaning, they are the dominant form of diagnosis and treatment. Mainstream Western medicine emphasizes technologies like surgery and pharmaceutical interventions to remove symptoms and return the body to health; this is defined as absence of disease.
Credibility Indicator: A credible source can be believed. We use credibility indicators to rank the trustworthiness of each source of medical information in your report. Examples of indicators are: who sponsors the source, whether a profit motive exists, or, in the case of journal articles, whether it is peer-reviewed (looked at by other experts in the field before it's published).
Diagnosis: When you are not feeling well, you have signs and symptoms. A sign is something objective, that anyone can notice, such as a rash on your face. A symptom is more subjective, like feeling tired, itchy, or restless. Putting together signs and symptoms gives a health care provider enough evidence to put a name to, or diagnose, what is bothering you. This leads to a treatment plan.
Directory: A web directory is one way to search for information using the World Wide Web. Think of trying to find information in a book. The fastest way is to look at the table of contents to get an idea of the major topics (titles of chapters) covered in the book. In the same way, a directory gives an overview based on subjects.
FTP Archive: An archive is a place to keep public records, so a File Transfer Protocol (FTP) archive is a collection of files available for anyone to view on the Internet. It's just one of many types of information sources on the Web.
Hidden Web: Information that is not accessible through search engines can be called hidden or invisible. You need to know where, and how, to look for this information on the "deep" Web.
Integrative Medicine (IM): This is a marriage of conventional (Western allopathic) therapies and Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) therapies. IM respects the fact that an equal partnership between patient and practitioner must be formed as every avenue for healing is explored: body, mind, and spirit. IM emphasizes therapies with a proven track record that are highly effective, less costly, and minimally invasive/toxic.
Invisible Web: Information that is not accessible through search engines can be called hidden, or invisible. You need to know where, and how, to look for this information on the "deep" Web.
Medical Literature: This general term is used to describe all of the publications surrounding medical care and research, with an emphasis on journals. There are many types of medical journals. Some publish research results for the first time (called primary journals). Some journals publish summaries of what's currently known about a topic (called review journals). Others are secondary sources that write about what's been published elsewhere, often with commentary and discussion of further types of research that would be helpful.
Some of the medical literature is "peer-reviewed", meaning it's been looked at carefully by experts before being published. This is considered a good idea, because it weeds out weak or inaccurate studies. With electronic journals becoming more common, sometimes the peer review process is skipped and research results are published quickly for public comment.
Access to medical journals can be very expensive, unless you live near a medical school or hospital library. Some journals favor "open access", allowing everyone to read the entire article for free via electronic access.
It takes skill and experience to know where to go for particular types of information, and to recognize the hallmarks of a trustworthy source.
Meta-search Tool: "Meta" means beyond, so a meta-search engine goes beyond the ability of just one engine by sending queries (requests for information) to many search engines at the same time. This can shorten the amount of time you invest in searching, because it returns a large quantity of information to you. It can also overwhelm you and limit the quality of the information.
Naprapathy: The name of this branch of manual medicine (nuh-prop-ah-thee) literally means "to fix or correct suffering". A naprapath (nap-ruh-path) uses highly skilled hands to locate areas of tight (contracted) or stretched (too loose) connective tissue in your body (think of the pain associated with a tight lower back, or whiplash following a car accident). Connective tissue is what holds your bones (vertebral column) and joints together, and attaches muscles to bones. Tendons, ligaments, cartilage, vertebral discs, and fascia are examples of connective tissue.
Using gentle manipulation, a naprapath relieves imbalances in connective tissue. This allows the nerves that travel through the affected areas to do their important work: carrying messages between your brain, internal body organs, and your limbs to keep your body in balance (homeostasis).
Other "adjunctive" (in addition to) techniques, such as thermal therapies (hot/cold), ultrasound, electro-therapy, manual traction, and others may also be used. Nutritional counseling is another important part of restoring your connective tissue to its proper balance.
Naprapathy does not use invasive techniques such as x-rays, surgery, or pharmaceuticals to locate or correct connective tissue imbalances. A naprapath's therapeutic approach is to make sure that your muscles, bones, connective tissues, and nervous system are communicating properly. This puts you in the best state of health possible.
Open Access: This term applies to information that is freely available to everyone, in electronic format on the Internet, with no gate keepers (passwords, memberships, or credentials). Open access journals are good news for consumers, because they provide access to technical information that may not be easily available in public libraries.
PDF: Portable Document Format (PDF) allows transfer of a document from one person to another using free Adobe Acrobat Reader software that you can download onto your computer. The file will have a .pdf file extension (you will see .pdf at the end of the file name, as opposed to .doc for Word documents or .xls for a spreadsheet). You can open, read, and print PDF files, but you cannot normally make changes to them.
Physiology: How all of your body parts work together (function) is called physiology. When you've been diagnosed with a disease, one or more of your organs is not functioning properly.
Pre-existing Condition: Whatever medical conditions you had before your most recent diagnosis were pre-existing. It is important to disclose pre-existing condition so that our literature search will be individualized to your situation. There may be treatments and medications that are not suitable for you, and will need to be highlighted in your report.
Prognosis: A medical care provider uses this term to discuss the likely outcome of your disease, based on past experience and research results. Sometimes statistics are used to give time frames and chances of recovery. It is important to realize that statistics look at an overall pattern across large numbers of people, but you are an individual. Your outcome may be different, and better, than predicted.
Reliability Indicator: When research is based on instruments and measurements, sources of error creep in. Reliability asks the question, "Have the measurements been taken in a dependable way, with as little error as possible?" Statistics are used to get an idea of how close to the "truth" the results are, by estimating variance and other sources of error.
Search Engine: A search engine is one of several ways to find information on the World Wide Web. Imagine that you are trying to find information in a book but don't have time to read the entire book. A quick way to find your topic is to use the index. In the same way, keywords and phrases can be used on a search engine to quickly locate information.
Searching: If you use an efficient strategy of keywords to find information on the web, you will shorten the amount of time you spend looking, and maximize your results. Search tools such as web directories and search engines minimize your time investment.
Specialized Database: These databases are a gold mine of extensive information on a specific subject, if you know where and how to look.
Unbiased: If medical information comes from an unbiased source, you can relax about hidden agendas. Here is an example of bias: researchers publish encouraging results about a particular drug, but they are funded by a pharmaceutical company. Some journals require the authors of a journal article to disclose conflicts of interest. MyHealthInfoSource will examine all sources of bias, to the best of our ability, so you can make an informed decision about whether or not you want to use the information.
Validity: When you are examining research results, you want to be able to trust the conclusions. Validity asks the question, "How confident can I be that the conclusions are correct?"
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