Diseases of Civilization
If "health is wealth," then the bulk of U.S. citizens, including our youth, are poverty stricken
Lifestyle diseases can be defined as diseases linked with one's lifestyle. These diseases are non-communicable diseases. They are caused by lack of physical activity, unhealthy eating, alcohol, substance use disorders and smoking tobacco…The diseases that appear to increase in frequency as countries become more industrialized and people live longer include Alzheimer's disease, arthritis, atherosclerosis, asthma, cancer, chronic liver disease or cirrhosis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, chronic kidney failure, osteoporosis, <Polycystic Ovary Disease> PCOD, stroke, depression, obesity and vascular dementia.
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Life Expectancy
Of course we all die of something and some point; that goes without saying. Reportedly, life expectancy in the U.S. is declining, as should be expected based on lifestyle factors, and I would argue that the only reason life expectancy is as high as it is, is the chronic use of prescription medications to extend life.
From the chart above you can see that life expectancy in the United States has increased since 1960; according to this data by 8.9 years. But look at how our life expectancy since about 1990 is dropping relative to the other western nations, and at how Portugal has overtaken us. But the increase in life expectancy says nothing about the quality of that extended life.
The chart above is very interesting. We, the United States, have extended our life span by 8.9 years as shown in the first chart, but, we are now expected to live our last 11.16 years with a disability. The math doesn’t work out very well in my opinion. And those last years are costly.
Big Pharma
Of course to extend life in the presence of said disabilities, we resort to pharmaceuticals.
Prescription drug statistics in the United States
There are more than 20,000 prescription drugs that are approved for marketing (FDA, 2020).
About 66% of U.S. adults take prescription drugs (Health Policy Institute, 2021).
About 46% of U.S. adults have taken a prescription drug in the past 30 days (CDC, 2019).
The therapeutic areas with the highest spending in the U.S. are antidiabetics, oncologics, autoimmune, and respiratory diseases (Statista, 2021).
The leading drug classes in the U.S. are antihypertensives, pain relievers, and mental health drugs (Statista, 2021).
The most commonly abused types of prescription drugs in the U.S. are opioids, tranquilizers, benzodiazepines, and prescription stimulants (Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 2014).
The U.S. consumed about 30% of the world’s supply of opioids in 2015 (Politifact, 2017).
Almost 50,000 people died from opioid overdoses in 2019 (National Institute on Drug Abuse, 2019).
Prescription drug statistics by age group
Prescription drug use tends to increase with age. According to the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey of 2015-2016:
18% of children aged 0-11 years old reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
27% of adolescents aged 12-19 years old reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
47% of adults aged 20-59 years old reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
85% of adults aged 60 or older reportedly used prescription drugs in the past 30 days
(CDC, 2019)
Those statistics are sickening, pun intended, especially the drugging of kids. None of these drugs, none, address the root cause of disease, which is largely related to nutrition and other lifestyle factors. None of these drugs is a cure, they merely treat symptoms. And look at the numbers for adults over 60 years of age; 85% are using prescription drugs. Wow.
Do you suppose that the pharmaceutical industry has any interest in restoring our good health through prevention? How about the disease care industry? How about Big Food? It’s food for thought.
Death by the Numbers
The first thing I want you to take note of in this chart, is what is not in this chart; the 3rd leading cause of death according to Johns Hopkins is actually medical errors, at 250,000 per year. You read that right. Stay out of the health care system to the extent possible; it is the most dangerous place in the United States, by far.
“Incidence rates for deaths directly attributable to medical care gone awry haven’t been recognized in any standardized method for collecting national statistics,” says Martin Makary, M.D., M.P.H., professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an authority on health reform. “The medical coding system was designed to maximize billing for physician services, not to collect national health statistics, as it is currently being used.”
My emphasis added. Lies of omission are more difficult to detect than lies of commission, but you have to ask yourself, why are we not hearing about this? And you can bet that we are doing little about it, except to obfuscate its existence. With respect to what is recorded in the chart, even the National Institutes of Health says that we are not doing as much as we should; Study finds leading risk factors and causes of death and disability underrepresented in NIH-supported prevention research.
The study found that while the top-10 risk factors for death are associated with more than half of the deaths in the United States, only a third of NIH-supported prevention research measured those risk factors as exposures or outcomes. Similarly, while 7 out of every 10 Americans die from the 10 leading causes of death, fewer than 3 in 10 prevention research projects supported by the NIH measure these causes of death as exposures or outcomes.
Here is the problem; eating a healthy diet and avoiding poisons (like cigarettes), exercising, getting enough sunlight on your body, etc., don’t fund industry.
I think it’s a fact that the incidence of cancer for sure, and perhaps heart disease as well, our top two killers, go back to prehistoric times. The real problem since the early 20th century is the incidence rates per capita, and the timing of onset of these diseases. As for me, I would rather die with heart disease or cancer, undiagnosed and asymptomatic, than of heart disease or cancer while disabled and being medicated the last 11.16 years of my life. There’s a big difference. My motto is “live long, drop dead,” as Mark Sisson says. But to accomplish that we need to understand the underlying causes of disease.
Those leading causes, at least the top 10, become more prevalent with affluence. But so what, how big of a problem are “Diseases of Civilization?”
NCD’s, non-communicable diseases, are what we are looking at above. And from the chart you can see why they are also know as “Diseases of Civilization';” the wealthier a country is, the more it suffers from entirely avoidable NCD’s. The United States can be seen in the upper right hand corner. Over 80% of our “disease burden” is caused by entirely avoidable NCD’s. You want to know why health care is so expensive relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), there’s your answer.
Conversely, we richer folk suffer less from communicable diseases:
The United States can be seen in the lower right hand corner above. If only we could live like paupers in terms of our lifestyle, while having the benefit of a system that prevents most communicable diseases, we’d be all set.
Our ill-health has even become a national security issue. From Military.com, Even More Young Americans Are Unfit to Serve, a New Study Finds. Here's Why:
A new study from the Pentagon shows that 77% of young Americans would not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, using drugs or having mental and physical health problems.
A slide detailing the findings from the Pentagon's 2020 Qualified Military Available Study shared with Military.com shows a 6% increase from the latest 2017 Department of Defense research that showed 71% of Americans would be ineligible for service.
I’m doubtful that today we could field the Army that won World War II; we are not the men and women we were in 1941. Seventy-seven percent of young people, it boggles the mind, are not fit to serve. Seventy-seven percent. We have grown soft.
The good news is that you can do something about yourself and your family, and influence your friends. That’s the only way we are going to recover our health as a nation. The powers that be will not help you. The culture will not help you. The deck is stacked against you. But it must be done. Git ‘er done.
Next up, I think I will write about “Deaths of Despair;” that won’t be a good news story either, but those deaths as well are largely preventable.
Note: within the charts you can see URL’s for doing your own research; all are from Our World in Data.
See also: Have We Genetically Adapted to Agricultural Foods?