What's going to kill you? Well providing you are accident free, and no one wants you murdered you'll have to rely on good old Mother Nature to see you off, so which condition will it be that finally does you in?
Top of the list for worldwide deaths is that old favourite heart disease, it puts an end to over
7 million people a year. Heart disease is really an umbrella term that covers many different heart conditions, but basically result in the same thing. Your heart stops pumping blood around your body and you die. The most common form is coronary heart disease, this is where the arteries that supply the heart with oxygen and nutrients become narrowed and the heart can't beat properly. The final stages are extreme pain, breathlessness and nausea just before unconsciousness and finally death.
Sounds nice, but it isn't. A stroke is the common name for a cerebrovascular accident, there that sounds worse. A cerebrovascular accident is the loss of brain function due to lack of blood to the brain, this is usually caused by blood clotting and blocking the passage of blood to the brain. The sufferer feels numbness, and dizziness at first. Difficulty in speaking, and swallowing, feeling confused, severe headache, difficulty moving then lack of consciousness.
The medical profession believe strokes will soon be the number one killer beating heart disease, but for now they come in second with just
5.5 million deaths a year.
Next on the list, the big "C". Lung cancer is the biggest cancer that's killing people in the world today. I'll not dwell on the risks smoking brings, but one thing's for sure, they aren't all smokers who get lung cancer.
Cancer is an uncontrolled cell growth, in this case it occurs in the lung tissue and causes shortness of breath, chest pain, weight loss and the sufferer to cough up blood. As the cancer grows it restricts the airways and leads to a predisposition for pnuemonia. The sufferer eventually drowns on their own mucus. Lung cancer ties in with the general condition of lower respiratory infections and causes
4.8 million deaths a year.
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease is a general term which includes the conditions chronic bronchitis and emphysema. This nasty little condition is caused almost solely from smoking, and it kills
2.8 million people a year worldwide.
As with the other lung conditions mentioned death is caused by a build up of fluid on the lungs and results in basically drowning.
Or basically newborn conditions. If you're reading this it's safe to say you've dodged this one. But perinatal conditions kill
2.4 million babies a year, which puts it at number five on our list.
Don't die of ignorance, die of AIDS!
Although the Western World only make up around 32,000 of the world's quota for AIDS deaths per year, the global figure stands at
2.1 million.
AIDS is a disease of the immune system, so the virus itself doesn't actually kill you. But with a faulty immune system you can look forward to contracting any number of "opportunistic" diseases.
Diarrhoea is liquid bowel movements, and this cheery number kills an extraordinary
1.54 million a year. That's 5.4% of all deaths worldwide.
Diarrhoea causes rapid depletion of water and sodium, which result in a nasty death.
Next up, Malaria. Passed around by mosiquitoes this nasty infection causes fever, chills, nausea, flu-like illness, and in severe cases, coma and death.
Malaria is a huge public health problem in tropical and subtropical regions, infecting 515 million people a year and killing a whopping
1.24 million. It's number eight on our list.
TB, Symptoms include chest pain, coughing up blood, and a productive, prolonged cough for more than three weeks. Systemic symptoms include fever, chills, night sweats, appetite loss, weight loss, pallor, and often a tendency to fatigue very easily. Death comes as with the other lung conditions when the lungs fill with fluid.
TB claims over
1 million deaths a year.
Only our second entry in the top ten from the big "C", and not nearly as deadly as lung cancer. Stomach cancer causes abdominal pain or discomfort in the upper abdomen, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea or constipation, bloating of the stomach after meals, weight loss, weakness and fatigue, and bleeding (vomiting blood or having blood in the stool), which can lead to anemia.
This horrid condition will kill around
0.7 million people this year.
If it's any comfort more people die in traffic accidents than they do from stomach cancer.
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