While life expectancy is growing, the average American can expect to spend nearly 12 years in poor health, and lifestyle diseases including heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes are now leading causes of death, driving unprecedented expense and tremendous strain on individuals and their families. In 2024, 90% of the nation's $4.9 trillion in annual healthcare spending was attributable to chronic and mental health conditions, and projections suggest that by 2030, more than 80 million Americans will live with three or more chronic diseases.
People line up outside the Centro Latino de San Francisco, a civic center serving seniors and those with disabilities, to receive the free lunch that they offer in San Francisco on Aug. 14, 2025. Experts across the state are reporting that older patients and social service clients are staying home to avoid rampant immigration enforcement. (Courtesy of Matthew Busch/The Investigative Reporting Program)
The world faces an emerging crisis of higher death rates among teenagers and young adults, according to a major study on the causes of death and disability worldwide. The reasons vary from drug and alcohol use, and suicide in North America, to infectious diseases and injuries in sub-Saharan Africa, the researchers said, but warned that their data should serve as a wake-up call.
Professor Neil Walsh and his team at Liverpool John Moores University have established that people who are dehydrated have higher spikes of cortisol during stressful situations. And these findings, published in the Journal of Applied Physiology, suggest that over the long term, dehydration could have important implications for chronic diseases that are associated with heightened stress responses over time, including depression, anxiety disorders, heart disease, and diabetes.
COVID-19 is no longer one of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. Early data on deaths in 2024, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show that COVID dropped from the list for the first time since the start of the pandemic. It became the third leading cause of death in the U.S. in 2020, and remained among the leading causes until now.
Factors like obesity, high cholesterol, and alcohol intake, often seen as harmful, may predict better survival in patients developing cancer or cardiovascular disease, highlighting the complexity of health and wellness.
The reason why heart disease and cancer and obesity and diabetes are bigger in the black community is because of the stress we carry from having to deal with being called the N-word directly or indirectly every day.
