Despite the astronomical sums of money being raised for cancer research and all that effort to walk run and race for a cure, little progress has been made.
According to the American Cancer Society for example, men still carry a 1 in 2 chance of developing cancer while women fair slightly better with a 1 in 3 chance. These data are for the years of 2001 to 2003. The number of people dying each year from cancer continues to rise and reached almost 560,000 people in 2005.
You’ll learn in the Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition from eCornell and the courses in this series why this need not be the case. As a nation our waistlines also have continued to expand with a prevalence of obesity rising to 33% of adults age 20 to 74 in 2004. Be sure to look at the CDC maps documenting this trend. These maps in fact have been used extensively around the country in the last few years; they’re really quite impressive.
One matter on diabetes I want to again bring to your attention is the economic toll this disease takes on the U.S. I told you that the cost of diabetes was well over 100 billion dollars per year. The numbers have only grown. According to the CDC, the estimated total cost of diabetes in the U.S. in 2007 for example was 174 billion. I would argue that this is a cost we cannot afford in this country.
The average person diagnosed with diabetes incurs medical expenditures 2.3 times higher then what expenditures would be in the absence of diabetes. Well according to American Diabetes Association they say there’s no cure for diabetes, aside perhaps from a pancreas transplant for type 1 diabetes. Meanwhile my medical colleagues are helping patients achieve astounding results reversing type 2 diabetes using dietary intervention.
In the case of heart disease I told you that 60 million Americans currently suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease. Unfortunately that number continues to rise, tolling almost 81 million people in 2005. You’ll learn in the next course why this also is absolutely unnecessary. Medical care is still killing us at alarming rates and we are spending a staggering amount each year. Over 6,000 dollars per person here in the U.S. It all adds up to about 16% of our gross domestic product. The health care system is in crisis with 75 million people lacking adequate health insurance or being uninsured altogether.
In Washington they continue to argue over who is going to foot the bill. We call that nothing more then rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Instead I’m suggesting something quite radically different something that will make health care expenditures a mere fraction of the sums we see today and yield a far greater return in the form of optimal health. So, as you can see, the trends in these disease rates continue to rise and as you move through these lectures and the following courses, I hope you will learn why this tragic rise in disease rates is so unnecessary and become motivated to take part in what I consider to be a very simple solution.
You can learn more in the Certificate in Plant Based Nutrition from eCornell from eCornell where Dr Campbell will help you disease-proof yourself with the power of plant based nutrition, become an expert in eating for health… and actually have the science, hard facts and knowledge to back it up.