One: Health Today
HOW ARE WE? Unfortunately, not so well. Official reports on the condition of our health proclaim loudly that“ Americans today are healthier than ever,” 1 but even a perfunctory glance at the statistics tables tells us differently. Although life-expectancy rates appear to have increased, that increase is deceptive: The child born today can expect to live twenty-six years longer than a child born in 1900, but the person who has already reached forty-five today can expect to live only four or five years longer than his counterpart did at the start of the century. 2 Moreover, during the past thirty years, mortality for the fifteen-to-twenty-four age group has increased fivefold, mostly because of traffic accidents, homicide, and suicide; it is still, unfortunately, on the rise. And is a long life necessarily a healthier life? Childhood problems that were rare a generation ago are now so prevalent that they are called“ the new morbidity” 3: learning difficulties, behavioral disturbances, speech and hearing difficulties, faulty vision, serious dental misalignment. The average child loses three permanent teeth to decay by age eleven, eight or nine by age seventeen; and 94 percent of adolescents have cavities in their permanent teeth. Dental diseases, especially caries and periodontal disease, constitute the most prevalent health problem in the nation. Ninety-eight percent of the population is affected, and over 19 million adults have lost all their teeth. Familiarity breeds contempt, so dental problems are generally considered“ normal.” Yet at least one dentist refers to tooth decay as a degenerative disease that may possibly be a precursor to diabetes. 4 Equally severe is the incidence of acute respiratory illnesses: Each year, there are an estimated 200 to 250 million cases, and some 2.4 million people( 10 percent of the population) contract pneumonia. A few more facts: Acute gastroenteritis— inflammation of the stomach and intestines— follows colds in frequency of appearance; women are diagnosed and treated for 850,000 cases of pelvic inflammatory diseases yearly; and every year there may be as many as one million new cases of genital herpes, plus several million recurrences, as well as 120,000 cases of hepatitis and 18,000 of bacterial meningitis. Tuberculosis may have long relinquished its place as one of the leading causes of death, but there were still over 27,000 cases in 1981, 1,900 of which were fatal. Among children, TB is on the rise. Other infectious diseases may take as many as 300,000 lives yearly. The most publicized and feared disorder of all, cancer, now takes an estimated one out of every five lives, or 20 percent of all deaths, up from a 5 percent mortality rate in 1900. In the mid-1980s it trails only accidents and violence as a killer of children and adolescents, a statistic not often noted. Major cardiovascular diseases are now the cause of 48 percent of all deaths, whereas in 1900 they caused only 18 percent. At least one quarter of the population suffers from elevated or high blood pressure. Poor health does not manifest itself only in strictly physical illnesses. There are also close to 2 million admissions to mental hospitals each year. The Veterans’ Administration estimates that in 1981 close to 2.5 million people sought out-patient treatment for mental and emotional problems. An additional 1.7 million were admitted as in-patients during the same year. At any given time, as much as a quarter of the population is estimated to suffer from depression, anxiety, or other emotional disorders. Manicdepressive conditions handicap an estimated 2 to 4 percent of adults at any given time. Suicide is the ninth leading cause of death for all age groups, and more than 80 percent of all suicide cases may be due to depression. Violence, directed toward self or others, is a major component of life in the United States and a cause of much fear and trauma. Hundreds of thousands of violent nonfatal assaults occur yearly, including instances of spouse abuse and rape. The homicide rate in this country is much higher than that of any other industrialized nation: 10.2 cases for every 100,000 people( England’ s is 1.0, Japan’ s 1.3). And there may be as many as 4 million cases of child abuse every year, at least two thousand of which result in death. All this violence is no longer viewed as purely psychological. A growing body of research links mood, violent behavior, and even criminal behavior with various physiological imbalances: an overactive thyroid, an excess of testosterone( male hormones), allergies, low blood sugar. Lead poisoning, vitamin deficiencies, and of course alcohol and drugs all alter physiology as well as mood. Behavioral problems have even been associated with a lack of natural light, insofar as light plays a vital role in the metabolism of calcium, a mineral widely regarded as“ nature’ s tranquilizer.” 5 HOW EFFECTIVE ARE OUR REMEDIES? The general public has a one-sided impression of the effectiveness of modern medicine and its germ warfare.