Diseases Starting with T
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Tennis Elbow
Doctors know the condition as lateral epicondylitis. The rest of us call it “tennis elbow.”
The term has entered wide use, though only a small group of people diagnosed with tennis elbow actually get it from playing tennis.
Tennis elbow is a common injury that will usually heal with minor treatment, but you have to give it time and rest.
Causes Tennis Elbow
Tennis elbow is a classic repetitive stress injury caused by overuse. Any activity that strains the muscles around the elbow over and over again can cause it. There’s also a version golfers get called “golfer’s elbow.”
In tennis, hitting a backhand puts some stress on your forearm muscles, which repeatedly contract when you hit the ball. If you have poor technique or grip the racquet too tightly, that stress may increase in the tendons that connect the forearm muscles to the elbow. The tendons may get small tears.
The more you do it — and tennis is a game of repeated strokes — the greater the chance for tennis elbow.
You can get it from other racquet sports, such as squash or racquetball. You can also get it from jobs or activities that involve repetitive arm motion, such as:
Tree-cutting (repetitive use of a chain saw)
Painting
Carpentry
Playing some types of musical instruments
Butchers, cooks, and assembly-line workers are among the groups that get it often.
Golfer’s elbow differs from tennis elbow in that the pain is focused on the inside of the elbow. But the causes are similar: tendon tears caused by repetitive movement, whether it’s a golf swing, lifting weights, or simply shaking hands.
Symptoms
The most common symptom of tennis elbow is an ache on the outside of the elbow. Over time — from a few weeks to a few months — the ache turns into a chronic pain. The outside of your elbow may become too painful to touch.
Eventually, you may find it harder or more painful to grip or lift things. Sometimes tennis elbow affects both arms.
Tinea Versicolor
Tinea versicolor is a fungal infection of the skin. It’s also called pityriasis versicolor and is caused by a type of yeast that naturally lives on your skin. When the yeast grows out of control, the skin disease, which appears as a rash, is the result.
The infection can happen for any of the following reasons:
You have oily skin
You live in a hot climate
You sweat a lot
You have a weak immune system
Because the yeast grows naturally on your skin, tinea versicolor is not contagious. The condition can affect people of any skin color. It’s more likely to affect teens and young adults.
Symptoms of Tinea Versicolor
Acidic bleach from the growing yeast causes areas of skin to be a different color than the skin around them. These can be individual spots or patches. Specific signs and symptoms of the infection include:
Patches that may be white, pink, red, or brown and can be lighter or darker than the skin around them.
Spots that do not tan the way the rest of your skin does.
Spots that may occur anywhere on your body but are most commonly seen on your neck, chest, back, and arms.
The spots may disappear during cool weather and get worse during warm and humid weather. They may be dry and scaly and may itch or hurt, although this is not common.
Tinnitus
Tinnitus is the medical term that refers to the perception of sound in one or both ears when no sound is actually present in the environment. While there’s no proven cure for tinnitus, understanding the symptoms, causes and related illnesses, can help ease, manage or block out the ringing-in-the-ears sensation.
Symptoms of tinnitus
Ringing-in-the-ears or a fullness-of-the-head sensation are the most common symptoms of tinnitus. While ringing is the most common experience, the noise can also sound like a buzzing, hissing or whizzing sound. It can range from a low pitch to a high pitch and may be soft or loud at times. For some, tinnitus seems to get louder at night, just before sleep when no other sounds are competing with it. Tinnitus can remain constant or come and go intermittently. In severe cases, the ringing in the ears is loud enough to interfere with work or daily activity, whereas those with mild tinnitus can experience soft ringing that is no more than a minor annoyance.
Causes of tinnitus
With so many people suffering from tinnitus, it is important to investigate what causes the ringing sensation. While the underlying cause of many cases of tinnitus is never discovered, there are some common causes which, in general, are known to aggravate the condition:
Age: Around the age of 60, hearing sensitivity can start getting worse. Hearing loss associated with natural aging is called presbycusis, and it can be accompanied by tinnitus.
Loud noise exposure: Being exposed to occupational loud noise on a regular basis from heavy equipment, chain saws or firearms is a common cause of tinnitus. However, even if you don’t work in a noisy environment, you can still suffer the effects of noise exposure by listening to loud music through headphones, attending live music performances frequently and engaging in noisy hobbies.
Unhealthy habits: Researchers are not entirely certain why, but drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, eating certain foods and consuming caffeinated beverages can play a role in tinnitus.
Common ailments: Having anemia, allergies, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, circulatory problems, diabetes and an underactive thyroid gland are all medical conditions that can lead to tinnitus.
Tonsillitis
At the back of your throat, two masses of tissue called tonsils act as filters, trapping germs that could otherwise enter your airways and cause infection. They also produce antibodies to fight infection. But sometimes the tonsils themselves become infected. Overwhelmed by bacteria or viruses, they swell and become inflamed, a condition known as tonsillitis.
Tonsillitis is common, especially in children. The condition can occur occasionally or recur frequently.
Causes and Symptoms of Tonsillitis
Bacterial and viral infections can cause tonsillitis. A common cause is Streptococcus (strep) bacteria. Other common causes include:
Adenoviruses
Influenza virus
Epstein-Barr virus
Parainfluenza viruses
Enteroviruses
Herpes simplex virus
The main symptoms of tonsillitis are inflammation and swelling of the tonsils, sometimes severe enough to block the airways. Other symptoms include:
Throat pain or tenderness
Redness of the tonsils
A white or yellow coating on the tonsils
Painful blisters or ulcers on the throat
Headache
Loss of appetite
Ear pain
Difficulty swallowing or breathing through the mouth
Swollen glands in the neck or jaw area
Fever, chills
Bad breath
In children, symptoms may also include:
Nausea
Vomiting
Abdominal pain
Trachoma
Trachoma (truh-KOH-muh) is a bacterial infection that affects your eyes. It’s contagious, spreading through contact with the eyes, eyelids, and nose or throat secretions of infected people. It can also be passed on by handling infected items, such as handkerchiefs.
At first, trachoma may cause mild itching and irritation of your eyes and eyelids. Then you may notice swollen eyelids and pus draining from the eyes. Untreated trachoma can lead to blindness.
Trachoma is the leading preventable cause of blindness worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 6 million people have been blinded by trachoma. Most blinding trachoma occurs in poor areas of Africa. Among children under 5, prevalence of active trachoma infections can be 60 percent or more.
Early treatment may help prevent trachoma complications.
Symptoms
Signs and symptoms of trachoma usually affect both eyes and may include:
Mild itching and irritation of the eyes and eyelids
Discharge from the eyes containing mucus or pus
Eyelid swelling
Light sensitivity (photophobia)
Eye pain
Young children are particularly susceptible to infection. But the disease progresses slowly, and the more painful symptoms may not emerge until adulthood.
The World Health Organization has identified five stages in the development of trachoma:
Inflammation — follicular. The infection is just beginning in this stage. Five or more follicles — small bumps that contain lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell — are visible with magnification on the inner surface of your upper eyelid (conjunctiva).
Inflammation — intense. In this stage, your eye is now highly infectious and becomes irritated, with a thickening or swelling of the upper eyelid.
Eyelid scarring. Repeated infections lead to scarring of the inner eyelid. The scars often appear as white lines when examined with magnification. Your eyelid may become distorted and may turn in (entropion).
Ingrown eyelashes (trichiasis). The scarred inner lining of your eyelid continues to deform, causing your lashes to turn in so that they rub on and scratch the transparent outer surface of your eye (cornea).
Corneal clouding. The cornea becomes affected by an inflammation that is most commonly seen under your upper lid. Continual inflammation compounded by scratching from the in-turned lashes leads to clouding of the cornea.
All the signs of trachoma are more severe in your upper lid than in your lower lid. With advanced scarring, your upper lid may show a thick line.
In addition, the lubricating glandular tissue in your lids — including the tear-producing glands (lacrimal glands) — can be affected. This can lead to extreme dryness, aggravating the problem even more.
Trigeminal Neuralgia
Trigeminal neuralgia (TN), also known as tic douloureux, is a distinctive facial pain syndrome that may become recurrent and chronic. It is characterized by unilateral pain following the sensory distribution of cranial nerve V (typically radiating to the maxillary or mandibular area in 35% of affected patients) and is often accompanied by a brief facial spasm or tic.
Signs and symptoms
TN presents as attacks of stabbing unilateral facial pain, most often on the right side of the face. The number of attacks may vary from less than 1 per day to 12 or more per hour and up to hundreds per day.
Triggers of pain attacks include the following:
Chewing, talking, or smiling
Drinking cold or hot fluids
Touching, shaving, brushing teeth, blowing the nose
Encountering cold air from an open automobile window
Pain localization is as follows:
Patients can localize their pain precisely
The pain commonly runs along the line dividing either the mandibular and maxillary nerves or the maxillary and ophthalmic portions of the nerve
In 60% of cases, the pain shoots from the corner of the mouth to the angle of the jaw
In 30%, pain jolts from the upper lip or canine teeth to the eye and eyebrow, sparing the orbit itself
In less than 5% of cases, pain involves the ophthalmic branch of the facial nerve
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever is caused by Salmonella typhi bacteria. Typhoid fever is rare in industrialized countries. However, it remains a serious health threat in the developing world, especially for children.
Typhoid fever spreads through contaminated food and water or through close contact with someone who’s infected. Signs and symptoms usually include high fever, headache, abdominal pain, and either constipation or diarrhea.
Most people with typhoid fever feel better within a few days of starting antibiotic treatment, although a small number of them may die of complications. Vaccines against typhoid fever are available, but they’re only partially effective. Vaccines usually are reserved for those who may be exposed to the disease or are traveling to areas where typhoid fever is common.
Signs and symptoms are likely to develop gradually — often appearing one to three weeks after exposure to the disease.
Early illness
Once signs and symptoms do appear, you’re likely to experience:
Fever that starts low and increases daily, possibly reaching as high as 104.9 F (40.5 C)
Headache
Weakness and fatigue
Muscle aches
Sweating
Dry cough
Loss of appetite and weight loss
Abdominal pain
Diarrhea or constipation
Rash
Extremely swollen abdomen
Later illness
If you don’t receive treatment, you may:
Become delirious
Lie motionless and exhausted with your eyes half-closed in what’s known as the typhoid state
In addition, life-threatening complications often develop at this time.
In some people, signs and symptoms may return up to two weeks after the fever has subsided.