You woke up this morning. I hope that is a good thing for
you. About 150,000 people didn’t. Wake up, that is.
Since this time yesterday, about 50,000 people have died of
heart disease. Another 27,000 died from cancer.
Those two are the biggies. In the last 24 hours.
Since yesterday, 5000 babies have died. 8100 people have died in accidents. Almost
2000 people died of suicide and another 1000 were killed by somebody else.
OK. Maybe I have your attention now.
Let’s skip the big ones for a moment. 5000 babies died since
yesterday. Some of you instantly had the thought that most of those were in
undeveloped countries. Places where
babies starve and hospitals don’t exist. There is truth in that.
But that happens in the good ol’ USA at an alarming rate. The
infant mortality rate in these United States is 5.6 deaths for 1000
births. In other words, we don’t rank at
the very top of developed nations. The reasons for this are complicated but the
bottom line is that we could do better.
Suicide claimed 2000 lives since yesterday. In this country, about 18 of those are
veterans of military services. That’s
per day. Every day. Eighteen people, mostly young men.
That’s almost twice the rate of suicides than in the general
population. It’s better than it used to
be. It hasn’t been long since it was 21.
Now back to the biggies. Heart disease. Cancer. Oh, and
respiratory diseases comes in at over 10,000 per day.
Let’s look at cancer. In my lifetime, a diagnosis of cancer
was a death notice. Leukemia? You aren’t going to make it. Most other cancers?
Your life expectancy was short.
Today, it is totally different. The 5 year rate of survival for all types of
leukemia is 65.7%. And prostate,
thyroid, testicular, breast, and colon cancers have a 100% cure rate with early
detection. Certain skin cancers, including melanoma—same thing.
I can’t stress enough how important that early detection is.
Annual visits to your Primary Care Physician that include a prostate exam,
colonscopies, breast self-exams and mammograms, testicle self-exams—all
components of early detection.
I’m outside a lot and strongly advocate for an annual visit
to the dermatologist. I saw mine last week. I had several small spots on my
bald spot frozen off. That’s prevention. The scary thing about skin cancers is
that they start innocent enough, a dark mole, maybe something we consider an
aging spot, but then they migrate (metastasize) to other areas. And maybe those
areas aren’t so easily detected. Until maybe it’s too late.
Which brings us to heart disease and pulmonary disease. For
the most part, those are considered “lifestyle” diseases. What we eat, what we
do, how we live our lives determines our chances of getting those killers.
You can’t affect your gene pool and maybe you can’t change your
environment very much, but there are so many things that you can change that
will decrease your chances of getting heart disease or pulmonary disease.
There are lots of things, actually. Exercise daily. Eat
healthier. Stop smoking. Treat your blood pressure issues. Control your
diabetes. Get help when you need it.
We, especially us men, won’t admit to emotional health
issues. But four times more men commit suicide than women. In other words, in
this country, for every five suicides, four are men. We’ve got a problem guys.
The big question is this—what are you doing today to make
sure you wake up tomorrow?
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