The following is from a colleague of mine, Don Clum DC. He posted it on Facebook and gave me permission to share it here with you.
Do you want to accumulate wealth? Enjoy your retirement in comfort, or leave money for your kids? If so, stay healthy.
It is expensive to be sick in this country!
What is the most expensive illness to have per case, PER YEAR?
- Chronic Pain: $6,000
- Cancer: $6,199
- Diabetes: $8,166
- Heart Disease: $12,030
- Depression: $14,189
- Alzheimer’s: $42,641
And these numbers don’t consider the personal expenses and efforts one invests in or has to make along the way.
Considering current numbers and calculating trends, the largest spend right now is chronic pain, diabetes and pre-diabetes (not calculated here) will effect the most people in time, but considering how one issue promotes the other the illness most likely to bankrupt the system is Alzheimer’s.
Granted, rarely are do any one of these issues stand alone. Weight issues and obesity are not up their either, so many overlapping expenses, I wanted to keep the concept clean.
- Chronic Pain: $600,000,000,000
- Cancer: $124,600,000,000
- Diabetes: $245,000,000,000
- Heart Disease: $320,000,000,000
- Depression: $210,000,000,000
- Alzheimer’s: $226,000,000,000
- Obesity: $190,000,000,000
- Grand total: $1,915,600,000,000.00 (Yes, that is nearly 2 trillion dollars)
That is about $6,000.00 per man woman and child in the US per year, $300,000,000,000 (billion) alone on medications, which is $892 per American per year alone.
PER YEAR AND GROWING EACH YEAR!!!!
The majority of the cases in all of these illnesses are preventable. I can’t say all, but the vast majority across the board are driven by environmental triggers, diet and lifestyle, or at least exacerbated by it.
All chronic illnesses and conditions follow the same pattern and process even when they effect different organs, systems, and parts of the body.
Today’s drastic oversimplification: There are only two states of the body, well or ill, healthy or sick.
When you are sick, what breaks down first and fastest and what condition you first see depends on you, your lifestyle, diet, environment and genetic susceptibility combined.
This is a reality check for me, not a downer, but tough love, I hope you see it the same way. I had to dig up and crunch these numbers, they are not readily available or easy to find…..probably for a reason. The US health situation is much bleaker and getting worse faster than anyone is telling us.
We NEED to do better and NOW!
Invest in proactive health assurance now, or lose it all to medical bills later and then some.
Inform yourself my friends, knowledge is power.
Dr. Don (Clum)
http://yourwellnesstribe.com
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