BUSINESS
Lifestyle diseases
LIFESTYLE DISEASES We have an aging population, staggering health inequalities and growing levels of obesity and lifestyle diseases. We look at the latest statistics, research and how holistic therapists can help…
G
O back a hundred and fifty years
or so and people died of quite different causes than they do today. Increased life expectancy, safer working conditions and improved medical care mean that we no longer die of communicable diseases, industrial diseases, childbirth, or childhood illness in the vast numbers that we did in the Victorian age. In 1900, 60% of deaths were due to communicable diseases like consumption, diphtheria, typhoid, TB, polio and many diseases that are no longer classified as life threatening like rubella or scarlet fever. Diarrhoea and enteritis were leading causes of death around 1900.
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HOLISTIC THERAPIST 2022
Life expectancy has essentially doubled since the Victorian period, though the rate of increase has slowed over the past decade and has now started to slip backwards a little thanks to the pandemic. Previously, people did not die from lifestyle diseases because, all too often, they simply did not live long enough to develop them.
What’s killing us now? According to UK government statistics, dementia and Alzheimer disease is now the most frequent cause of death recorded, at 12.7% of all deaths. This means that just over one in eight of us will die this way.
holistictherapistmagazine.com
