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Do you know the difference between healthy life expectancy and life expectancy? Especially since life expectancy has increased since 1990 from his 75 years to his 77 years, but his average healthy life expectancy has remained the same. According to a study by the University of Washington’s prestigious Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, it is fixed at around age 65.
What it really means is quality of life. Living longer and living better are two different things. “Healthy lifespan” simply means how long you live. living an inherently healthy lifeas opposed to being consumed or defined by the disease.
Don’t get me wrong. It is possible to enjoy a good quality of life while suffering from a chronic illness, from rheumatoid arthritis to multiple sclerosis, congenital heart disease, blood clots, and infections. But self-regulation. Not only that, but some of the most inspiring stories I have witnessed and treated in patients involve the courage to overcome chronic illness, find hope, and struggle.
Using hearing aids may help people live longer, USC study finds
Still, it’s shocking that in 1990, 20% of American adults had multiple medical problems; today, that number is nearly 30%.
why? Obesity is certainly part of the explanation, as is sedentary behavior, poor diet, and unhealthy chemical additives to food. And increasing obesity means increasing diabetes. This is a multisystem disease and the more weight you gain, the more likely you are to have it. This is because we have a fixed number of insulin receptors, but the heavier you are, the more you need.
But the problem goes beyond obesity, poor diet, and diabetes to include anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. Even after the coronavirus pandemic, heart disease remains our number one cause of death, cancer the second, and an unhealthy lifestyle, including lack of sleep, can dramatically increase your risk of dying from both. I am.
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A new report from the American Cancer Society sheds further light on this issue. Overall, cancer deaths have decreased by 4 million since 1990 due to reduced smoking, early detection, and improved treatments (particularly for lung cancer). At the same time, however, the incidence of some cancers that are affected by lifestyle habits, such as prostate cancer and breast cancer, is increasing. , endometrial cancer, and even colorectal and cervical cancer in younger patients. “Colorectal cancer was the fourth leading cause of cancer death for both young men and women 20 years ago; now it is the first leading cause of cancer death for men and the second leading cause of death for women.” It is not a result of improved detection, but rather an increase in carcinogens and the unhealthy lifestyle discussed above. Advances in technology allow us to live longer, but chronic diseases shorten our healthy lifespan.
Perhaps the biggest problem is our problem Health insurance coverage, this is a disease-focused system rather than a prevention-focused system, relying on fear of major illnesses to justify higher premiums. After all, if you’re healthy and have a long healthy lifespan, you pay a lot of money in insurance premiums (or take a job you hate because your employer pays for it) so that your illness is covered when your healthy lifespan ends. less likely to want to. But your life goes on. Health insurance is notorious for providing most of the payments during the last years of life, when most quality of life is lost.
These days, more and more people are finding the solution to their problems with a range of medications, including the weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Wigovy, and Munjaro, which are effective but do not address the underlying problem.
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As a society, we need to exercise more, eat less meat, eat less carbs and more vegetables, and to break the cycle of worry, we need more sleep.
At a time of political strife and war abroad and division and hatred at home, we need more kindness and compassion, more acceptance and love. This country was built on healthy debate, not the health effects of fear and hate.
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