6 in 10 US adults have a chronic disease.
4 in 10 have more than one.
Chronic diseases don’t happen overnight; they take hold in your 30s.
Here are some sobering statistics from the CDC.
1 in 3 deaths is caused by cardiovascular disease. That translates to 859,000 people each year.
Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, and many of the leading risk factors can be avoided with lifestyle changes. These risk factors include; smoking, excessive drinking, too much UV radiation from the sun or tanning beds, and being overweight.
600,000 people die from cancer every year, and 1 in 3 people will have cancer in their lifetime.
37.3 million Americans are living with diabetes, and 96 million US adults have prediabetes.
1 in 4 US adults with diabetes doesn’t know they have it.
Those aren’t just numbers; they’re people who are unable to live the lives they want due to chronic disease, and many of them are having their lives cut short.
None of these conditions develop overnight, and none of them are contagious.
They’re insidious.
It’s useful to define “insidious” here because it perfectly describes the progress of chronic disease.
Insidious- Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner or having a gradual and cumulative effect.
What does that mean in real life?
It means chronic diseases accumulate over years and decades, and that doesn’t start when you qualify for senior discounts.
It begins in your 30s.
It takes time for enough plaque to accumulate in coronary arteries to cause a heart attack decades of time.
It takes time for plaque to accumulate in the brain to cause cognitive decline, decades of time.
It takes time for the cumulative effects of poor stress management to evolve from inconsequential to life-threatening, decades of time.
It takes time to reap the harvest of a sedentary lifestyle, decades of time.
You get the idea.
The consequences of how you live your life today will echo deep in the future.
Your sleep matters.
Your diet today matters.
Your activity level matters.
Your stress management matters.
It’s your call. You can either make deposits you get to use later or make withdrawals you’ll have to cover in the future.
