Are we losing the Battle against Diseases? Part 1

Have you noticed that diseases are in the rise in the last one hundred years as statistics show?

a. Over 7 million Australians have at least 1 chronic disease.
b. Chronic disease is the leading cause of death in Australia.
c. Half of all Australians aged 45-64 have 1 or more chronic diseases.
d. Half of all Australians have 2-3 risk factors for chronic disease.

So my question!

Are we loosing or winning the Battle against diseases?

In this article I will explore three Major Points
1. The Scientific facts and statistics about the health approach that we have been using in the last 100 years in treating diseases.
2. Does this health approach work or not?
3. Is there any other alternative approaches to health?

Today the major three chronic diseases that claim more lives than the rest of diseases in Western Society are:

1. Diabetes:
“The incidence of type 1 diabetes is now twice as high among children as it was in the 1980s and 10 to 20 times more common than 100 years ago, according to peer-reviewed research uncovered in a new book from Kaplan Publishing.”

2. Cardiovascular Disease:
In Australia, while death rates have fallen, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease has increased, with the proportion of people living with cardiovascular disease rising from 8% to 21% between 1977-78 and 1995

Types of cardiovascular disease
The two leading causes of death from cardiovascular disease are ischaemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease (stroke). Over the last three decades, ischaemic heart disease has been the leading cause of cardiovascular death for men and women. In 2000, it accounted for 59% of men’s deaths and 48% of women’s deaths from cardiovascular disease.

Stroke was the second most common cause of cardiovascular death since 1968, accounting for 21% of men’s and 28% of women’s deaths from cardiovascular disease in 2000. Throughout most of the 20th century, women were more likely to die from stroke than men. This pattern was reversed by 1968. Between 1968 and 2000, the male death rate fell from 184 to 54 deaths per 100,000, while the female rate fell from 168 to 48 deaths per 100,000. This represents a fall of 71% for both men and women over the period.

3. Cancer Incidence:
The incident of cancer has increased since 1900 – 2000 from
1. 1900 – 1 person out of 20 got cancer in the course of their life
2. 1940 – 1 person out of 16 got cancer in the course of their life
3. 1970 – 1 person out of 10 got cancer in the course of their life
4. 2000 – 1 person out of 3 got cancer in the course of their life
5. 2025 – 1 person out of 2 will get cancer in the course of their life as predicted by the World Health Organization

According to Dr Christopher Wild, director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, he said
1. “Despite exciting advances, the report shows that we cannot treat our way out of the cancer problem”.
2. “More commitment to prevention and early detection is desperately needed in order to complement improved treatments and address the alarming rise in cancer burden globally.”
On the other side statistic shows in Australia the number of new cases of cancer diagnosed increased from 47,417 in 1982 to 118,711 in 2011.

Over the same period, the age-standardised incidence rate increased from 383 cases per 100,000 persons in 1982 to 484 per 100,000 persons in 2011.

Mortality The number of deaths from cancer increased from 17,032 in 1968 to 43,039 in 2012.

So the Statistics are pretty grim and what can we do?

To understand the scale of this problem, we need to identify first how the problem started from the beginning.
Let’s take as an example a typical person suffering from frequent bowel pain, diarrhoea and discomfort. The first reaction is to go check with his GP, where normally a few tests will be carried to identify the symptoms and give the condition a name.

Once the disease is identified some medication will be prescribed to manage the symptoms and you will probably will be told that you need to learn to live with it. But this doesn’t stop the problems as the disease will progress and other symptoms will appear. Other illnesses or disease may emerge as well..

Now why do we do that?

Find out more in the next blog…