What is a chronic illness? Some people incorrectly think this refers only to a devastating illness.

When physicians use the term, they refer to long-term illnesses, some of which, like high blood pressure, might not cause symptoms. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) of the United States Government defines chronic diseases as "illnesses that are prolonged, do not resolve spontaneously, and are rarely cured completely” (www.cdc.gov/washington/overview/chrondis.htm).

Why Is This Epidemic Happening?

Aging Of The Population
In 1800 the average person lived 36 years; in 1900 it was 47 years; in 2000 it was 77 years, and soon it will be eighty years. As the average person grows older, she or he tends to acquire more chronic diagnoses, because the risk of such illnesses increases with age.

The Success Of Medical Science
There are two ways that breakthroughs in medicine cause an increasing amount of chronic illness.

The first is by lowering the death rate. When doctors speak of curing cancer they don’t necessarily mean that cancer will go away. What often happens is that cancer is transformed from a lethal into a chronic disease.

The second way that breakthroughs in medical science increase the rates of chronic illness is by better diagnostic methods. Doctors are able to make a diagnosis of a chronic illness at an earlier and milder stage of the disease than was true for our grandparents

Now that we have effective anti-AIDS drugs, we have turned AIDS from a lethal into a chronic condition.

What is the impact of all this success in terms of the number of people living with AIDS in the United States? The number of people living with AIDS has risen, from less than 5,000 people in 1985 to more than 350,000 people in 2001, a rise of more than 7,000%. That’s because we can prevent death, but have no cure for AIDS.

Increasing Amount Obesity
In the past the rich were fat and the poor were starving. Today the rich are thin and the poor are fat. The increasing rate of obesity is well known, and leads to increasing rates of diabetes, metabolic syndrome, arthritis, depression, anxiety and a variety of medical disasters.

A research group at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has studied this epidemic and published much of their research on the web at www.partnershipforsolutions.com.