As we approach our annual State of the Union address, let’s examine our current state of affairs regarding health. Bear with me on this one because I know I’m hitting you with a lot of numbers and statistics, but we really need to face the truth. As a side note, I always call it the State of the Onion…because onions have layers…. but seriously…
We are at a tipping point with our health. Chronic diseases and mental health issues are surging, and our medical system is failing to solve the crisis. Our annual healthcare spending has increased to 3.5 TRILLION dollars. We spend almost twice as much as any other high-income country and yet we have the highest rates of obesity and chronic diseases, and the lowest life expectancy.
Six out of ten adults have one chronic disease and 4 out of 10 have two or more. Chronic diseases, which include heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and arthritis among others, are the leading cause of disability, and account for approximately 90% of our healthcare costs. Risk factors include nutrition, physical inactivity, alcohol consumption, smoking, and being overweight.
Over 92 million Americans have been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease (CVD) and almost half of our population has high blood pressure. On average, one person dies every 38 seconds from CVD. Read that line again. Every 38 seconds someone dies from a largely preventable condition. Risk factors include nutrition, physical inactivity, obesity, and high blood sugar.
And speaking of high blood sugar…as of 2015, approximately 100 million people in the U.S. are diabetic or pre-diabetic. That works out to be about 1 in 3 people and is predicted to rise to 1 in 2 by 2040 if we continue our current path. Approximately 95% of them are type 2 diabetic, which is a dietary disorder and reversable. Diabetes is a primary contributing factor to heart disease, kidney disorders, blindness, neuropathy and nerve damage, limb amputation, loss of sex drive, and cognitive decline. Risk factors include being overweight/obesity, physical inactivity, nutrition, and family history. (hmm, see a pattern here?)
There are over 4700 new cancer cases diagnosed every day and we have about a 1 in 3 chance of developing cancer in our lifetimes. The most common types are lung, breast, prostate, and colorectal…all of which have direct ties to lifestyle factors.
In 1975, autism rates were about 1 in 5000 but now they are about 1 in 40.
Anxiety is also increasing and is now 1 in 20 for children and 1 out of every 5 adults has some form of anxiety disorder.
I could keep going. Our prognosis looks bleak, but we have the power to change it.
According to the CDC, 48.9% of people have taken one prescription medication in the last 30 days, 23.1% have taken 3 or more, and 11.9% have taken 5 or more. (2011-2014) The cost is incredible and in 2017 alone, we spent $333.4 BILLION on prescription drugs. You’d think for that kind of money that we’d all feel fabulous and there wouldn’t be an illness in sight. Well, if pharmaceuticals were the answer. Clearly, they are not.
We know that 70% of our population is overweight or obese and that this is a contributing risk factor to many chronic diseases. More than 25% of 17-24-year olds are too overweight to join the military.
So…we are paying for foods that harm us, medicines that fail to cure our diseases, and higher healthcare costs? And still getting sicker and fatter?
This doesn’t make any sense.
At all.
Whatsoever.
Except in the light of profit perhaps. A recent JAMA article reported…
“In 2016, companies paid physicians and teaching hospitals $978.96 million for nonresearch activities, including $381.13 million to serve as faculty or speakers presenting company-developed materials during lunch or dinner talks. Other payments were for consulting ($210.05), food and beverages ($164.21 million), travel and lodging ($96.9 million), and honoraria (14.64 million).
Increased medical marketing reflects a convergence of scientific, economic, legal, and social forces. As more drugs and devices and medical advances convert once-fatal diseases into chronic illnesses and with renewed interest in prevention for some diseases, the marketing of tests, treatments, and services has expanded.
Spending increases from 1997 through 2016 were greatest for drugs for diabetes/endocrine diseases (from $22 million to $725 million) …”
So basically, the pharmaceutical industry pays almost a billion dollars to medical professionals in order to keep their prescription pads active and it’s largely centered around chronic diseases. Remember that $333.4 billion in pharmaceutical expenditures every year? Seems like their investment is paying off.
And we haven’t even begun to talk about how much money the industrialized food industry makes.
Aside from profit, why are we spending so much money for “healthcare” and yet are increasingly ill?
“The fundamental answer to why so many humans are now getting sick from previously rare illnesses is that many of the body’s features were adapted in environments from which we evolved but have become maladapted in the modern environments we have now created. This idea, known as the mismatch hypothesis, is the core of the new emerging field of evolutionary medicine, which applies evolutionary biology to health and disease.” Daniel E. Lieberman PhD
By “previously rare illnesses” he is referring to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and “diseases” that are commonplace now. We are not living in the manner for which we are adapted and its wreaking havoc on our bodies and minds. Our culture, which includes how we view medicine, our food systems, our financial structure, social patterns, lifestyles, where we live (increasingly in cities), technology, transportation, our connection to nature, exposure to microbes, and pretty much everything as we know it, has changed dramatically in the last 250 years, give or take.
We have a lifestyle crisis and it’s killing us.
Slowly.
That way we have plenty of time to buy pharmaceuticals. Not to mention fast food/processed foods because we are too tired, sick, fat, and broke to bother with something real.
Admittedly, our “advances” in healthcare are not completely without merit and they do save lives. Modern, allopathic medicine has definite value and strengths and I’m grateful. However, our current system of treating symptoms rather than the cause is very backwards. In the US, our medical system is fantastic in the areas where it does address causation…such as trauma or injury but we are a colossal failure at treating mismatch disorders like diabetes, obesity, and CVD.
If the majority of our medical treatment and expenditures stem from largely preventable diseases, just imagine if our system was set up to keep them from happening. Just picture for a moment, if you, your family, your friends, your coworkers, weren’t “sick”. That you were healthy, productive, and happy. That the child or grandchild that you are joyously awaiting didn’t have a 1 in 40 chance of being autistic. That you could look at your siblings and not wonder which of you was going to be the one who becomes diabetic or receives a cancer diagnosis. Picture awakening, refreshed and feeling amazing, looking forward to your day instead of another slog through misery, discomfort, and anxiety.
That world is possible. We can feel strong, healthy, and vital. We can feel positive and happy.
Our national average expenditure is approximately $10,000 per person annually in healthcare costs. What would happen if we applied that $10,000 to lifestyle modification that reversed… better yet, prevented diabetes and CVD instead? How much organic fresh food, enjoyable physical activity, and stress reduction could we buy with such a sum?
Is there even a price that we can place on feeling good?
We just need to get back to living like we are designed…to being humans. And no, I’m not saying that we need to all become roaming cave-dwellers. And it doesn’t have to involve giving up everything we enjoy and spending all our time on an elliptical machine while eating kale. We do, however, need to eat food fit for humans, get some movement, and look at the alternatives to “a pill for every ill”.
We must take responsibility for our own health. Somehow that seems to have ended up in the hands of the government, insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and industrial food conglomerates.
The largest contributor to our wellbeing is the food we eat. Multiple times a day you have the chance to make your health better…or worse…depending on what you choose to consume.
Yeah, here’s the tough love. Diabetes, heart disease, obesity…. are a choice not a disease. (about 97% are reversible/preventable)
And I do mean love. As I researched the statistics for this post, I was openly crying on numerous occasions. It’s not inevitable that we suffer chronic illnesses and die slow miserable deaths. We don’t have to watch our loved ones, or ourselves be ravaged by chronic illness, to miss out on living a full, joyful life with health and wellbeing.
If lifestyle modification reverses diabetes…if CVD is preventable…. if we can largely avoid the most common cancers…then it seems like an incredibly obvious choice. Not that we want to give up all our progress and technological advances of course. This is an amazing time to be alive and we have more access to information and health restoring options than at any point in history. We have made huge strides in reducing childhood mortality, infectious diseases, acute trauma, not to mention the wonders of the internet and same day shipping from Amazon.
Think about it.
Think about how a chronic illness impacts not only you, but your family, friends, and community.
We are a mess.
We can heal.
It’s not even going to be hard. We’ll do it together.
“Beating cancer is hard…Drinking your coffee black Is. Not. Hard.” Melissa Hartwig, The Whole 30.
The next post will show you that food is our cornerstone and it’s the most critical change we can make.
But hey, in the meantime, at least we can get a pizza delivered by using an app instead of having a real human interaction and we can consume it on the couch in front of our new 65-inch 4K smart TV that we ordered yesterday.
Alexa…. dim the lights.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2720029
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/drug-use-therapeutic.htm
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2017/095.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pdfs/data/statistics/national-diabetes-statistics-report.pdf
https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/managing/problems.html
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2674671
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/142/6/e20174161
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180424184119.htm
https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/any-anxiety-disorder.shtml
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Janice Penberth 