Heart Disease- Diabetes- Obesity: What Have we Achieved so Far?

We know that the heart disease and diabetes pose significant threats to our health, especially as we grow older and of course major challenges to the medical community. Although there have been major advancements in the medical field as far as detection and treatment of these conditions is concerned, but unfortunately these problems continue to result in serious health complications, disability and premature death. The sad part is that the overall incidence of these diseases is still going to increase as more and more people continue to age and also with rise in obesity rates, especially in US.
Did you know that few scientific studies came out in 2005 which showed that the life expectancy has declined for the first time in this country!!! How did this happen? We thought that we were working hard to create better world with so much of advancement in all field including medical science. Yes, no doubt we HAVE made a lot of progress in terms of finding cure and treatment for so many different conditions....BUT why still almost a MILLION Americans die of cardiovascular disease every year, which means 1 death every 34 seconds, and out of all those about 50% are above the age of 50 and this is just due to heart disease. What about Diabetes? Did you know that as of today almost 20 million Americans have diabetes and this number has increase by more than 60% since last 10 years, and again more than 50% people who have diabetes are above the age of 50. It is unfortunate that now we have started to see more and more cases of children with diabetes, which we could never imagine earlier, because at one point diabetes was considered as a condition in only the adults.

Can you IMAGINE how much it costs us every year in terms of dollar figure to fight against both heart disease and diabetes? Collectively, these conditions cause more than 1 million deaths every year and result in more than $620 billion in direct and indirect costs.

So, what happened? Where did we go wrong? Should we stop and rethink what did we do differently OR what did we NOT do that we have to see such increase in the prevalence of these conditions?

I think the problem is that we have a luxury of choosing a bad lifestyle and as we age we start to realize that the choices we made earlier in life were probably not the smartest ones.

What do you think?