Greetings gang: Dr T here
Life Expectancy Getting BETTER?
Are you like most Americans that believe that we are living longer and living a better quality of life?
I was also. But sadly the facts do not reflect our beliefs. Did you know that life expectancy decreased for the first time since 1993?
That is right. The CDC put out a report that stated that life expectancy is going down. I will put the link to the very long article at the bottom of this blog. I heard once that it takes almost a mile to turn an aircraft carrier around 180 degrees. And even though the life expectancy only went down .1% that is huge when you think about how the statistics had to go up enough to change the direction of our life expectancy. There are 325 million of us. So the numbers had to change a lot to get the % of life to decrease.
All but one disease is getting worse. Which is the one getting better you ask? Cancer, yes that is right, less people are dying from cancer, more people have it but less are dying from it. But all the rest of the diseases are getting worse. Heart attack, dementia, Alzheimers, etc…
The sad part about this is no one in the system seems to be bothered about this trend.
That is why I am moving my entire practice into Functional Medicine. We are looking for the cause of disease not just mask the symptoms.
We have one of the best if not the best emergency room medicine in the world. Because in the ER we are not trying to make you healthy, we are trying to keep you alive. Get the bullet out and get you stabilized.
The problem is that we took that emergency room model and applied it to Chronic Disease, and it is not working.
Example – I go to the Dr and he takes my BP and it is high. He give me a Rx to lower the BP. But guess what he never asks, WHY IS IT HIGH? The BP is not the actual problem it is a warning sing that something else is not working correctly and the sign is high blood pressure.
Medicine is the largest Business in the world and it has consistently failed its customers. We need to change our philosophy about health or we are in trouble
Here is a direct quote from the article from the CDC
“The modest drop in life expectancy is a result of several top-ten causes of death becoming more deadly in 2014. Of the top ten causes, eight saw a statistically significant increase, one saw a decrease (cancer deaths) and one stayed the same (deaths from influenza and pneumonia.) The largest climbs were from heart disease (9% increase), unintentional injuries (6.7% increase), and Alzheimers Disease (15.7% increase). Other top-ten killers, such as stroke, diabetes, and suicide, also increased.”
And we accept this. WHY?
According to the NIH and the CDC the human body is built to live to be 120 yo. So why do we accept dying at 78? 40 some years earlier than we are supposed to. MARKETING, the health care world has convinced most Americans that living into your 70 and 80s was a great life.
Well I refuse to accept this. You should not either.
What are you doing today to make your life something that you can be proud of?
Here is the article if you want to read it for yourself
https://sputniknews.com/art_living/201612081048338713-america-life-expectancy-falls-decreases/
I heard this the other day
I am willing to do what most are NOT WILLING to do today
To be able to do the things tomorrow that others CAN NOT do
Till next week
Dr T