Why has the “popularity” of disease jumped several hundred percent over the past 200 years?
More and more often, after a visit to the family doctor, we hear — “unfortunately, your illness is not yet curable” or “well, what can you do, your disease is chronic… here are some medicines for the symptoms…” or “hmm, unfortunately this bacterium is already resistant to antibiotics… well, there’s nothing I can do — here are some medicines to ease the symptoms”. Hasn’t this happened to you yet? You’re in the minority! “There are no healthy people — only patients without a diagnosis.” It’s a poor joke, because this saying is closer to the truth than you might think.
Let’s look at the statistics (the short, boring part):
Cardiovascular disease accounts for 30% of all deaths worldwide (who.int/heart).
Cholesterol. 71 million (33.5%) Americans have excessively high levels of “bad” cholesterol. Europeans are following close behind (cdc.gov/cholesterol).
Excess weight affects 70% of people, of whom 30% are obese. The grim statistics don’t spare children either — as many as 17% of children are also obese (cdc.gov/obesity). See also: weight loss and metabolic health.
Cancer. Statistically, about 50% of men (every other man!) and about 30% of women will develop cancer during their lifetime (cancer.org). Moreover, the number of cancer cases (e.g. prostate cancer) is thought to be considerably higher. The probability that a 60-year-old man “has” prostate cancer reaches as high as 70%, but people often die of other causes and no further cancer testing is ever done…
Diabetes affects about 10% of the world’s population (wikipedia.org/Diabetes).
Arthritis and other bone diseases. The likelihood of developing these reaches 50%, if you live long enough not to die of something else first (cdc.gov/arthritis).
Alzheimer’s (dementia). One in three seniors dies from brain-degeneration diseases (alz.org).
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the fourth-leading cause of death worldwide (wikipedia.org/COPD).
This is only a fraction of the thousands of diseases — just to give you a general picture of the scale. Of course, you may also be plagued for decades by simpler conditions such as nail fungus or some eczema or skin disease, which are very often incurable. Treatment is only with “ointments” and only for the symptoms. Forgive us, medicine hasn’t come that far yet… We’ve only decoded the language of DNA, we can genetically modify whatever you like, we’ve “rewound” time in simulators and watched how the UNIVERSE was born 13.7 billion years ago… But what these little spots on your skin are, the ones that plague a tenth of all humanity — we still haven’t figured out. Here’s a cream for you — a good one, hormone-based, treats the symptoms beautifully. And the side effects? Ah, read them yourself, if you can find where they’re written and can make out such tiny print.
Why is this so? Why has the “popularity” of disease jumped several hundred percent over the past 200 years?
Hundreds of thousands of medical studies have been carried out around the world; by studying them we can genuinely “form a picture” of how to live healthily and what prevention of disease should look like. Why isn’t this taught to children in schools? An obese, diabetic child who will probably die of a heart attack or cancer in 50 years certainly knows how to calculate a discriminant from a formula, yet has no idea what it means or where they will use that information in life. Just as they have no idea why being healthy “pays off” and how to achieve it. Worse still — their parents often don’t know either!
In other words, the prevention mechanism in the health system doesn’t work; people’s health is not being looked after. Such education does not exist. Let’s hope the situation will eventually start to change. Because so far, no one is interested in you being healthy.
So who is responsible for keeping you healthy?
Certainly not your doctor or the ministry of health, so don’t blame them. Maybe the pharmaceutical companies? Certainly not — they make and sell medicines for the symptoms of disease; they have no interest in you being healthy.
We ourselves are responsible for our own health. So we ourselves must understand how our bodies work, when we harm them, and what is healthy for us — when and why. And ultimately, how to “put our own house in order” if we’re already too late for prevention.