4 ms·
That "epidemic of chronic disease" isn't an American phenomenon, it's a global one. The percentage of people suffering from chronic conditions is surprisingly s
by akiselev 6y ago
That "epidemic of chronic disease" isn't an American phenomenon, it's a global one. The percentage of people suffering from chronic conditions is surprisingly stable from country to country. It's the prevalence of acute diseases that changes due to quality of healthcare and (in the case of COVID) transient government competence.
The each step in the shift from subsistence agriculture => industrial labor => sedentary lifestyles are characterized by their own maladies. It starts with chronic malnutrition, then moves to chronic diseases cause by pollution, then to chronic obesity and heart disease and is compounded by climate. Each country has its own unique mix of the four but the overall rates don't change much.
- lambdaba 6y agoI agree, it's not American but it's an American invention and as such America has it more extreme: nowhere else do you see such extreme obesity, and so much processed food... I don't agree that America doesn't have the highest rate of lifestyle-induced disease, of that's what you were implying.
- akiselev 6y agoYou can't judge a chronic disease by whether or not it's a lifestyle choice. A chronic disease is a chronic disease and in most cases, it doesn't just go away - otherwise, it'd be called an acute disease. It's not even particularly right anyway. Most of the western world is a few years or a few decades behind the United States in obesity rates and not far behind at all on heart disease.