Why do people die?
Statistics and life Once upon a time, our ancestors usually ended their lives in the stomachs of predators. As soon as he is so old that he could not hear the approach of predators in time or did not have time to quickly run away and climb a tree, so welcome to their meal, as a snack.
Hundreds of thousands of years have passed since then, the man from the victim of predators himself became the most cruel predator on Earth. How many people now live and why die?
In the era of antiquity, people had a life expectancy of about 30 years. Centuries passed, life expectancy gradually, but very slowly, grew, until in the last century it pulled up with a giant jerk.
The development of medicine and competent obstetric care have made it possible to sharply, by more than an order of magnitude, reduce child mortality. And thanks to vaccinations, terrible epidemics that once devastated entire countries are gone. According to scientists, in Neolithic times people lived on average 21 years. Then, human living conditions improved somewhat, and from the Copper Age to the middle of the 18th century, the average life expectancy of people on Earth ranged from 31 to 35 years.
In Neolithic times, people lived for 21 years. Photo: Source. Then, life expectancy in civilized countries began to grow, reaching 76–77 years in Europe and the USA at the end of the last century. True, in Asian countries, life expectancy decreased from 40 years in the long past to 30–33 in the 20th century. So the average life expectancy in the world is still from 36 to 66 years ...
Until the 20th century, the main cause of low average life expectancy was colossal infant mortality. During childbirth, both the child and the woman in childbirth often died, many children died before they were 5 years old. In addition, many dangerous diseases that are easily treated nowadays were fatal in the 19th century.
Inflammation of the lungs, measles, smallpox, cholera, plague, dysentery ... All those diseases that nowadays are either vaccinated in childhood, or there are drugs that almost certainly cure them.
Tuberculosis - a disease that in the 19th century brought many townspeople to the grave, today is not considered life-threatening.
Unfortunately, from the fact that we have learned to treat or prevent many diseases, the golden age of medicine has not come.
Yes, tuberculosis today is not a fatal disease.
Yes, pneumonia is treated - the main thing is not to start.
Yes, sexually transmitted diseases are no longer fatal, as it was only a century ago. Take a course of injections - and any "Neapolitan" disease will disappear like a nightmare. The main thing is to start treatment on time. But new diseases appear in return. HIV, hepatitis C have become known to people only recently. At the same time, those who are sick with them know that these diseases are not treated.
Those who have acquired HIV or hepatitis C need to spend a lot of money just to stay healthy, then these diseases remain in a chronic form, without going into an acute clinical form, because this also means a significant increase in the cost of treatment and, alas, a quick death. Although the proportion of deaths from HIV is less than 3% of the total. About the same amount of hepatitis C deaths per year.
What are people most often dying of today?
Heart and vascular diseases account for 31% of deaths. Cardiovascular disease is a scourge of our time. Infectious diseases account for about 11% of deaths.
Respiratory, respiratory, and lower respiratory tract infections also account for about 11% of deaths.
Different types of cancer are responsible for 14.69% of the total number of deaths.
Most of the remaining diseases in statistics give a fraction of a percent of total mortality.
Each one. I must admit that statistics more often hide information than it shows.
How is the differentiation of causes of mortality by age?
After all, each of us is familiar (or was familiar) with people who once had excellent health, whom no illness had taken all their lives, who died at a very respectable age from ... old age.
Once a powerful organism, after a certain age, it begins to weaken, grow old, bones become fragile, the heart weak, as if memory completely disappears.
Yes, and the thought begins to limp: something seems to the person, then he can’t remember and perform the once completely familiar manipulations for him, to do what he has been doing every day for decades.
And a simple cold suddenly leads him to death ... Many people who have passed over 80 years have specific senile diseases:
dementia, Alzheimer's disease, bone fragility (osteoporosis).
Today, people of advanced age suffer from diseases that were previously known, but they were not so widespread, because earlier people simply did not have time to live up to these diseases.
Nowadays, doctors are working on a cure for osteoporosis, dementia and Alzheimer's disease. And there are tremendous successes in treating these diseases.
A little more time - and with the help of new medicines, the elderly can overcome the diseases known to us, while maintaining activity, health and clarity of mind.
At the same time, scientists suggest that people have a biological age limit of just over 150 years. Today, many residents of Western Europe and the United States live to 80−90 years, less often - up to 100 years or more.
The question arises: after people learn to treat diseases of old age, known in our time, allowing us to live a normal active life and at the age of 100 years, what new “diseases of old age” will appear? After all, you must admit, you can’t live forever!
Post a Comment