Incurable, terminal or fatal diseases are the most dreaded of all health ailments. They are painful, they don’t just take a toll on the ailing person but the entire family, the treatments are expensive and coping or coming to terms never gets easy. As unpleasant but real these ailments may be, they are still rare. Cancer is not as common as you would imagine. Besides, it has more to do with genes than anything else. The healthiest of people in the world who have never indulged in any vice as such can develop cancer. It is not statistically or realistically accurate to say that everyone is at risk of cancer or sexually transmitted diseases.
There are certain health risks that we really face. Those are what we should worry about. Most of these diseases are associated with old age. Here are the top global diseases as recorded over the years, which have been known to be the cause of death for the ailing.
Ischemic heart disease or coronary artery disease is the most common cause of death in the world, followed by stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, lower respiratory infections, trachea bronchus and lung cancer, HIV or AIDs, diarrheal diseases, diabetes, accidents/road injury and hypertensive heart disease.
All these diseases are the direct fallout of ageing and lifestyle choices. Coronary artery disease is a condition where the walls of the arteries get thick due to deposit of plaque resulting from cholesterol. This prevents the blood flow to the heart and eventually one suffers cardiac arrest or heart failure. Stroke is a cerebral attack where the brain doesn’t get sufficient blood flow or has a clot and then it results in brain death. Respiratory diseases including chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder and lung cancer can result from various lifestyle choices, most importantly smoking. Accidents causing fatal or disabling injuries are very common. Lifestyle diseases like diabetes and diarrheal diseases, which are chronic and can be incurable, are becoming more common over the last two decades.
As you observe the causes of these diseases, you would see the correlation of modern day choices and the causal effect of these conditions. Most of these diseases are caused due to the choices we make and the lifestyles we lead. That makes them the diseases that we should really worry about. There are certain health conditions that we cannot do anything about. We cannot preempt genetic cancer or type 1 diabetes. But we can avoid or prevent the diseases that our actions cause or facilitate.