Dr Grace Su

Our body’s natural defence When it comes to fighting common illnesses such as a cough and cold, our immune system plays an important role in defending us against disease-causing microorganisms. How can you help strengthen your immune system? There are many products which claim to help boost our immunity. Out of all the health supplements that can help strengthen our immunity, Vitamin C is the likely supplement that comes to mind. Lesser-known (but still important!)

Surgical nutrition is something that is very important, and this covers both the pre and post-surgical periods. Without adequate nutrition, muscle wasting, immune dysfunction, and impairedrecovery can occur. In general, encouraging adequate intake of nutrients, with a focus on ensuring adequate protein intake is important. Other than just diet, early mobilization is also important to facilitate protein synthesis and muscle function. If appetite is an issue, it may be advisable to work with a dietitian todevise an oral diet, and work on preventing caloric and protein deficits.

The short answer would be: it can help detect many things! Understanding the components of any blood test and how diseases affect them is part and parcel of interpreting blood results. To help you understand more about what an FBC can help show, we will needto look at the components in an FBC/CBC test.

To answer this question, we first need to discuss briefly how X-rays work. When X-rays travel through the body, they are absorbed in different amounts by different tissues, depending on the properties of these tissues, in particular, how radiologically dense these tissues are. Structures such as bone contain calcium which helps them absorb X-rays more readily. This, in turn, produces high contrast on the X-ray detector causing bony structures to appear whiter than other tissues on an X-ray image.