But diseases occur, and they have an impact on lives and lifestyles. The idea of wellness is to sustain a vigorous and active life with social engagement and accomplishments well into old age. Eventually, chronic conditions emerge, but staving them off as long as possible is always the goal.
Unfortunately, everyone dies of something at some point. For the first time, researchers have a picture of just what impact certain diseases have on lifespan, thanks to a report that examined older people and determined which diseases had the greatest measured impact on living life.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health recently released a report detailing the effects of multiple medical problems on a person’s potential lifespan.
The determination wasn’t one-size-fits-all in its conclusions. Research revealed that, as expected, multiple physical problems can cascade into overall misery. For each additional ailment, people lived an average of 1.8 fewer years than expected. However, unique circumstances made it difficult to predict, and several conditions had minimal effect while others had a huge impact.
The World Health Organization claims the average American will live until just short of his or her 80th birthday. But diabetes, heart failure, kidney disease or other chronic illnesses (many of which are now the norm and widespread in America) will subtract years from that projected lifespan.
Interestingly, the world is aging. There soon will be more old people than children, and more elders are living to extreme old age than ever before. That leads to a question of how they will live those years – will they have good health and well-being, or will they merely face a prolonged period of illnesses and ailments, thanks to modern medicine and newly developed treatments?