Dr. Thomas Alan Ball MD

Enteral feedingEveryone needs food for survival, but sometimes due to illness a person is unable to eat normally. This can be due to difficulty swallowing, reduced appetite or due to surgery that interferes with the eating process. Enteral tube feeding should be used in such cases. For this...

What are BCAAs?The term BCAA is short for branched-chain amino acid. The human body is made up of different proteins, which contain amino acids. There are 20 amino acids and nine of them are considered essential amino acids, which you can get through your diet because your body cannot make...

What is a urinary tract infection?The main function of the urinary system is to get rid of waste, maintain the body’s water balance, and regulate electrolytes. Its function starts with the kidneys, the organ that filter blood to produce urine, which is composed of extra fluid and wastes. Before...

What is a rib cage?A human rib cage consists of 12 pairs of ribs, which are symmetrically paired on both sides of the body. The rib cage shields the organs located in the chest region, which include the lungs and heart from any kind of damage or injury. The ribs are attached to the sternum...

It is very common to assume that anyone with the sniffles is contagious. Very often, however, those sniffles are not linked to anything contagious at all--they can be related to other factors. The first thought of many individuals when they suffer from a runny nose, nasal congestion, coughing, or...

IntroductionWhen people say salt, they usually mean the common table salt. Salt is a mineral that is mainly composed of sodium chloride (NaCl). To distinguish table salt from a class of chemical compounds called salts, the terms rock salt or the mineral name halite is used. Sodium is also...