Living Too Short; Dying Too Long

As we rounded the corner into the 21st century, physicians and medical researchers took special note to the state of health and medical care in the United States and the industrialized world. Looking back over a century gone by, the comparisons of diseases are remarkable. In the early 1900s people primarily died of infectious diseases. The 4 leading causes of death in the U.S. back then were pneumonia, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and influenza, and people had a life expectancy of a little more than 43 years. But thanks to the discovery of antibiotics and advances in their development during the second half of this century, deaths due to infectious diseases declined dramatically, even after the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

As we move into the 21st century, we find people primarily suffering and dying from what are known as chronic degerative diseases. These include coronary artery disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, macular degeration, cataracts, alzheimer’s dementis, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Even though the average life expectancy in the United States has increased dramatically during this past century, our quality of life due to these chronic degerative diseases has taken a major hit. We are essentially “living too short; dying too long”.

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