Why are chronic diseases becoming more and more prevalent among younger people?

I don't know if you have noticed that long-term 996, staying up late and sitting for a long time have caused more and more young people to suffer from "chronic diseases". For example, thyroid nodules, frozen shoulder, cholecystitis, chronic gastritis, etc., have all come unknowingly, and chronic diseases have gradually become a thorn in the lives of young people, following them everywhere...

As a scientific researcher who studies aging and longevity, I feel deeply about the saying "young people get sick slowly". Since I often deal with hospitals (mainly involving sampling), I often hear such words as "how come you suddenly get sick when you are fine?" In fact, I really want to say that many diseases do not develop suddenly, but have signs long before, but are not taken seriously, and finally continue to worsen until they develop into serious symptoms. Today, I will talk to you about the issue of "chronic diseases" among young people.

01Most diseases are acquired gradually

Many diseases that are familiar to everyone, especially chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, high blood lipids, and high blood sugar, and even cancer, are not formed in a short period of time. For example, for adults, the most common type of diabetes is type 2 diabetes, which is caused by the ineffective function of insulin. However, type 2 diabetes is not a sudden process, but a gradual process. Its main pathogenic factors are excessive intake of high-calorie diets, obesity, and lack of exercise. These are common situations in our daily lives. Many people do not pay attention, and eventually accumulate damage until insulin can no longer cope with the body's metabolism, and then the disease occurs.

In recent years, many chronic diseases have a tendency to occur at a younger age. Take the type 2 diabetes mentioned above as an example. This disease is also called adult-onset diabetes. On the one hand, it is different from type 1 diabetes, which is caused by congenital insulin deficiency. On the other hand, this disease usually occurs after the age of 35-40, so it is called adult-onset diabetes. However, in recent years, type 2 diabetes has a tendency to become younger and younger, and the age of onset is getting lower and lower, and the disease group is beginning to develop towards a younger group.

(Montefiore Medical Center Diabetes Survey, showing an overall increase in the incidence of type 2 diabetes) [1]

The reason for this is that one important factor is the change in dietary structure. In recent years, with the development of agriculture and industry, our food is no longer as scarce as it was in history, and various high-nutrition foods have frequently become the staple food of many people, which has led to the fact that our dietary structure today is often not very reasonable.

In addition, many young people lack exercise, stay up late, sit in the office for a long time, and do not pay attention to healthy diet. As a result, they consume more and more, but their consumption does not increase but decreases. Finally, they consume too much high-fat and high-sugar food, which leads to overnutrition in the body. However, the insulin in our body has not evolved to adapt to the current dietary changes, so type 2 diabetes appears. Similar situations exist in many chronic diseases. It can be said that many people are "afflicted with chronic diseases" at a young age.

So do we know nothing about this? The answer is no.

02Physical examinations and sub-health that deserve attention

In fact, as mentioned above, many diseases are not without characteristics. When we have a physical examination every year, we will see various physical examination indicators, but many people do not pay much attention to them. Only those marked with abnormal values ​​will be occasionally paid attention to, such as high uric acid and mild fatty liver, which are common in physical examinations. These are all signs of chronic diseases. For example, fatty liver is mild at first, and doctors often recommend adjusting diet and exercising more, but many people think that mild cases do not require surgery, so they just ignore it. Or they think they are young and can get through it, but if this situation continues to develop, it will form severe fatty liver, and further to cirrhosis, and at this time, ordinary surgery may not work.

For example, those indicators that look normal cannot be ignored. These indicators are not simple, and many of them are a reflection of our physical condition. Many times, when we see that an indicator is within a normal range, we think everything is fine. However, we ignore the longitudinal changes. In fact, many indicators are a longitudinal change process, which indicates changes in physical condition. Take total cholesterol, a common indicator in physical examinations, as an example. This is a blood lipid indicator and one of the indicators of many chronic diseases. The normal range is 2.33-5.18mmol/L. If your indicators are in the normal range for several consecutive years, but show a trend of gradual increase, then you should be alert. This means that although you may not show any symptoms, total cholesterol is actually in a gradual increase process, which more deeply reflects the continuous changes in the body. So keep the physical examination report and pay attention to this dynamic change. If it continues to develop, then it may break through the upper limit next, and finally cause chronic diseases.

03Difficulty of chronic diseases

In many cases, the development of chronic diseases is gradual, but it does bring a lot of inconvenience to many people. When chronic diseases strike, medication becomes a routine consumption.

It is often said that illness goes away like pulling a thread. For chronic diseases, they accumulate slowly when they come, and it is even more difficult to go away, and it is even difficult to maintain them. Therefore, many chronic diseases have become perennial medicine jars. We encountered a lot of such situations during our sampling process. For example, in a diabetes sampling we did, we encountered many such situations. Many of these people were between 35 and 45 years old. It can be said that they are in the struggle period. This is also the time of what everyone often calls the mid-life crisis. There are elderly people above and children below, and there are mortgages and car loans in between. Such a heavy economic burden will put many families in trouble. Diabetes brings not only physical discomfort, but also the need to take medicine every day, and the medicine is often not cheap, which has a greater impact on personal and family economic conditions.

Therefore, for many young people, physical examinations have become a ruthless trial. The unhealthy "seeds" that they have planted in the past gradually sprout in their daily lives and are exposed after the physical examination. Being sick not only makes the savings that they have worked hard to earn go down the drain, but also makes the body suffer considerable pain, especially long-term and consumptive diseases such as chronic diseases, which are a heavy economic burden. Although there is now medical insurance for chronic diseases, for most people, if they have not yet entered the chronic disease stage, they should still adjust their personal eating habits and lifestyle in a timely manner, exercise more, and live a healthy life until they are old. This is the best way.

1 Grinstein, G., Muzumdar, R., Aponte, L., Vuguin, P., Saenger, P., & DiMartino-Nardi, J. (2003). Presentation and 5-Year Follow-Up of Type 2 Diabetes mellitus in African-American and Caribbean-Hispanic Adolescents. Hormone Research in Paediatrics, 60(3), 121–126.