Chronic Illnesses Essay Paper
Chronic illnesses nowadays are a real danger to people’s both physical and mental health, because they are, in fact, incurable. It is possible to cure the symptoms of these diseases like epilepsy, heart stroke, disseminated sclerosis, arthritis, bronchial asthma, obesity, diabetes, cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, and many others, but in most of the cases, not the illnesses themselves. These are deadly, yet they are ones of the most preventable.Chronic Illnesses Essay Paper
According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2014, chronic diseases are the cause of death of seven out of ten people (Health, 2015). Chronic illnesses are especially dangerous when they are ignored and left without any medical treatment. Every second a lower limb is amputated, due to the diabetes development (Boulton, Vileikyte, Ragnarson-Tennvall, Apelqvist, 2005). “Between 2000 and 2030 the number of Americans with chronic conditions will increase by 37 percent, an increase of 46 million people” (Wu & Green, 2000).
Such statistics cannot be more saddening and terrifying, and the reasons for chronic illnesses are very variable. Just like any other disease, these are generally caused by unhealthy lifestyle, that may include traits like inactivity in sports, tobacco and alcohol usage, unhealthy nutrition with excessive sugar which leads to overweight; ecological problems, poverty, and age.Chronic Illnesses Essay Paper
Chronic diseases give significant damage to the physical condition of a human, the therapy is expensive and, moreover, they ruin mental health and self-esteem. No matter how to look at it, people with chronic diseases must have enormous willpower and courage to cope with their illnesses and still go forward anyway. People with such diseases might feel incomplete, discriminated, inferior to the healthier people or incapable of doing some specific actions, and that is also destructive to their health condition. That is the reason they need support and love from their closest ones and maybe even the help of a therapist in some cases.
As already stated above, chronic diseases are very preventable, because they de facto occur due to the malfunction of some organ or a complex of organs. Fortunately, there is a significant amount of ways to cure the symptoms of these illnesses and make the patients’ lives better. On a personal level, people with chronic diseases could do a lot of physical activities, spend time outside, eat different and healthy food, worry less, and so on, although not everyone could have an opportunity to do so on a physical state.
The government and the whole world understands the reasons diseases progress, and how massive the impact they left and still actively leaving on world’s population with millions of deaths from such fatal diseases. That is why right now there are a lot of organizations and communities, which support preventing this health issue by tobacco control, better nutrition, obesity prevention, and so on. Their primary goal is apparently to reduce the number of ill people and stand out against physical inactivity and obesity. Many people agree with the idea to fund these organizations. “According to polling conducted during the 2009 health care reform debate, the public believes that disease prevention is a key component of improving the long-term prospect of the nation’s health care system, and the rhetoric about reform has often included references to prevention” (Waidmann, Ormond & Bovbjerg, 2011).
Since chronic diseases are a big problem to the population, the government funds billions of money to improve the situation and to cover up the costly therapies, needed for ill people. The assumption of scientists that the population of people with chronic illnesses is going to increase in some quantity of years slightly was quite right, and that is why the amount of money, the government spends on these needs, is increased with every single year.Chronic Illnesses Essay Paper
The harder people in the country work, the higher the chances for them to get one, or maybe even multiple chronic diseases. More and more people are living nowadays with numerous diseases at once, which are costly, remembering the fact that every one of these costs an immense amount of money. “In fact, 31.5% of all Americans, almost a third of the population, are now living with multiple chronic conditions” (MCC). The healthcare needs of people with MCC are often complex. Seventy-one percent of all healthcare spending in the US goes towards treating people with MCC” (Gerteis, Izrael, Deitz, LeRoy, Ricciardi, Miller, Basu, 2014). Although chronic diseases are not only concentrated in the United States, they are scattered in all countries, and some may have a bigger population of people with such illnesses, and some may not, which depends a lot on the country. Nevertheless, many countries consider helping ill people in need with millions of dollars per year. “If funding is not available to support these and other primary prevention initiatives, the country can expect to see at best a continuation of current trends in chronic disease” (Waidmann, Ormond & Bovbjerg, 2011).
The impact chronic diseases made in the past, and still making in our time cannot be measured because it continues to spread worldwide, and what we could do is to reduce the number of ill people in the future, because we are the ones who make our future life bright and healthy. No one is adequately protected from being ill, so everyone must guard his or her own health. To conclude all written above, the best option for people to get rid of this problem with health is to start refusing from bad habits and developing themselves both physically and mentally, before chronic illnesses take even more lives.Chronic Illnesses Essay Paper
References
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). “Leading causes of death and numbers of deaths, by sex, race, and Hispanic origin: the United States, 1980 and 2014”. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus15.pdf#019
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2011). “National Diabetes Fact Sheet.” Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/pubs/pdf/ndfs_2011.pdf
Gerteis, Izrael, Deitz, LeRoy, Ricciardi, Miller, Basu. (2014). “Multiple Chronic Conditions Chartbook.” Retrieved from https://www.ahrq.gov/sites/default/files/wysiwyg/professionals/prevention-chronic-care/decision/mcc/mccchartbook.pdf
Waidmann, T.A., Ormond, B.A., and Bovbjerg, R.R. (2011). “The Role of Prevention in Bending the Cost Curve.” Retrieved from https://www.apha.org/-/media/files/pdf/topics/aca/role_of_prevention_in_bending_cost_curve.ashx?la=en&hash=63FCB163A42F70C5AB166E0A0C524736AEA1C244
Wu, Shin-Yi and Green, Anthony. (2000). “The Number of People With Chronic Conditions Is Rapidly Increasing.” Retrieved from http://www.nasuad.org/sites/nasuad/files/hcbs/files/191/9519/ChronicCareChartbook.pdf Chronic Illnesses Essay Paper