SSC CGL Diseases & Nutrition

1.Core Concept

DISEASES & NUTRITION — SSC CGL General Awareness ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CORE CONCEPT ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Diseases are conditions that disturb the normal working of the body. Nutrition means getting the right nutrients from food to keep the body healthy. When nutrition is poor, the body gets deficiency diseases. When germs (bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites) attack, the body gets infectious diseases. SSC CGL loves questions from BOTH categories. There are two main disease types you must know:

1. Deficiency Diseases — caused by lack of vitamins or minerals. 2. Infectious Diseases — caused by pathogens (germs).

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ KEY RULES & PROPERTIES

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ VITAMIN DEFICIENCY — MASTER TABLE (Most Tested)

Vitamin A → Night Blindness, Xerophthalmia Vitamin B1 (Thiamine) → Beriberi

Vitamin B2 (Riboflavin) → Ariboflavinosis (cracked lips) Vitamin B3 (Niacin) → Pellagra (3 Ds: Dermatitis, Diarrhoea, Dementia)

Vitamin B9 (Folic Acid) → Neural Tube Defects in newborns Vitamin B12 → Pernicious Anaemia

Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid) → Scurvy (bleeding gums) Vitamin D → Rickets (children), Osteomalacia (adults)

Vitamin E → Sterility, muscle weakness Vitamin K → Excessive bleeding (blood does not clot)

MINERAL DEFICIENCY — ALSO TESTED Iron → Anaemia

Iodine → Goitre (swollen thyroid), Cretinism in children Calcium → Osteoporosis, weak bones

Zinc → Poor wound healing, stunted growth Fluoride → Dental decay (too much fluoride causes Fluorosis)

INFECTIOUS DISEASES — PATHOGEN TYPE Bacterial: Tuberculosis (TB), Cholera, Typhoid, Tetanus, Plague

Viral: Dengue, Malaria (NO — Malaria is Protozoan!), Rabies, Polio, Hepatitis B, HIV/AIDS Fungal: Ringworm, Athlete's Foot

Protozoan: Malaria (Plasmodium, spread by female Anopheles mosquito), Amoebic Dysentery Worm (Helminth): Filariasis (Elephantiasis — spread by Culex mosquito)

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2.Shortcuts

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ TRICK 1 — FAT vs WATER SOLUBLE VITAMINS Fat Soluble = A, D, E, K → Remember: 'ADEK' or 'A Dog Eats Kibble' Water Soluble = B-complex + C IMP: Fat soluble vitamins are STORED in body. Water soluble are NOT stored (excess is excreted). So overdose risk is only for fat-soluble vitamins. TRICK 2 — MOSQUITO-DISEASE MATCH Anopheles (Female) → Malaria Aedes → Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika Culex → Filariasis (Elephantiasis) Memory Code: 'A for Malaria, Ae for Dengue, C for Filaria' TRICK 3 — PELLAGRA's 3 Ds Pellagra (Vitamin B3 deficiency) = Dermatitis + Diarrhoea + Dementia If a 4th D is added, it is Death. Exam asks: 'Which disease shows 3 Ds?' Answer = Pellagra. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

3.Exam Patterns

— WHAT GETS ASKED ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SSC CGL asks: → 'Which vitamin deficiency causes X disease?' → 'Which mosquito spreads Y disease?' → 'Which pathogen causes Z disease?' → 'Which vitamins are fat-soluble?' → 'Match the deficiency with the disease.' ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

4.Worked Example