Medical Symptoms
Symptoms > Medical Symptoms
From the French word, sympt�m, for "anything that his befallen one," the English word symptom has two distinct yet similar meanings. But attached to make the phrase, medical symptom, the meaning becomes relegated to indicating a physical condition pointing to a specific illness, disease, or disorder.
More exemplary of medical symptom is a partial characteristic of a whole ailment or affliction. For example, a medical symptom of a heart attack is a constricting, painful or discomforting tightening of the chest. The tightening is a smaller sign of a larger condition.
A medical symptom is as a tool or token of what to look for in the larger problem, as a sign of something else, or as an affectation of disease, illness, or disorder.
A medical symptom is also an abnormal function pointing to or an indication of disease. However, a medical symptom does not necessarily work in isolation. For example, a medical/psychiatric symptom of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is hyperactivity. Another one is impulsive (sometimes reckless) behavior. And another is intrusive, interruptive action. But there are primary and secondary symptoms (totaling about 69) of which one has to show all of the former and most of the latter before being diagnosed with the disorder.
A medical symptom or two of a psychosis doesn't indicate psychosis. One has to show all of the symptoms combined to, say, be deemed a megalomaniac.
At the same time, while the list of medical symptoms for a heart attack numbers about twenty, if a person experience even one symptom, he she is best advised to seek immediate medical attention. Though it's rare that a heart attack victim would only feel light-headedness, for instance, and run to the doctor for diagnosis of a possible "silent heart attack," it's not unusual for a person to have a shortness of breath, sweats, and one short pain and ignore it as a stress attack or something.
On the whole, one single medical symptom, which all of us have had, should not have us screaming about impending doom.