The human body is always covered by skin and offers protective purposes. When the skin is opened or is damaged, there is always release of peripheral fluids or bleeding.

Sometimes an injury can occur and the body fluid can leak from with in the body system and as seen in many cases of internal bleeding.

But there are various types of injuries that can lead to body dysfunction and sometimes can develop into diseases.

Common body injuries include conditions such as fractures, sprains, strains, dislocations, concussions, compressions and wounds. Other forms of injuries can occur as a result of exposure to extreme temperatures that occur in form of burns.  There is also type of injury that results from exposure to  toxic substances.

Food poisoning is one of the commonest forms of body injuries caused by food intoxication. Chemical like substances inflict direct injury to body cells that can detoriolate the health of our major organs and blood vessels.

Food poisoning usually results from foods contaminated with  pathogenic microorganisms. Human beings are  usually caught up unknowingly given the fact that contaminated foods with these micro-organisms do not always taste bad, look bad and do not smell badly.

One of the best ways to avoid food intoxication is to ensure proper hygiene in the food materials and the environment around its preparation.

In most cases, it’s very hard to determine whether a food material has been contaminated with pathogenic microorganisms unless microbiological testings have been carried out. To avoid potential problems in all edible food materials,it is very important to control and  eliminate pathological microorganisms in food products.

Pathogenic microorganisms  can cause infection or intoxication with in our body system.

Infection is caused by the ingestion of food containing live bacteria that can grow and establish itselt in the human intestinal tract. Fever is one of the common symptoms accompanied with diarrhea or pain.

Intoxication results from ingestion of food that contains toxins formed by bacterial growth in the food material. Pain is usually the commonest that results from intestinal inflammation and usually accompanied by diarrhea.

Emotional stress is also another silent form of body injury. Emotional injury refers to cellular damage that is caused by chronic emotional stress.

Emotional stress can lead to disease and dysfunction of our body system. Possibly, this is part of life that is not given the attention that it deserves because it’s difficult to come up with standardised treatments that can address every person’s  sources of anxiety and fear.

Our emotional health status is the single most important determinant of our overall health, since it’s the foundation from which all of our daily choices are made.

Emotional health status affects the tone at which our autonomic nervous system works on a daily basis. It’s very important to know that the tone of our autonomic nervous system is a huge determinant of our overall health status.

Some people suffer repetitive physical body injuries. Examples of repetitive stress injury include back and shoulder pain from wearing a backpack over only one shoulder, a strained neck from talking too long on the phone while leaning to one side, and carpal tunnel syndrome from typing too long with our wrists over-extended.

The best way to avoid repetitive stress injury is to stay physically comfortable while doing activities that require the same position or motions for long stretches of time. Designing an optimal work environment, taking regular breaks to stretch and rest, and making sure that we don’t maintain an asymmetrical position while doing repetitive work are all effective means to avoiding repetitive stress injury.

There is also injury caused by electro-magnetic fields to people who are exposed to high electron emissions. Though some studies have not yet come with proof, some have shown a link between high electron emissions and occurrence of carcinogens that can cause malignancies like  leukemia, lymphoma and cancer of the nervous system, especially in children exposed to high electron emissions.

Dr Joseph Kamugisha is an oncologist  at Rwanda Military Hospital, Kanombe