Eat for Life The Food and Nutrition Board's Guide to Reducing Your Risk of Chronic Disease (1992) / Chapter Skim
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4 Diet and Chronic Disease in the United States
4 Diet and Chronic Disease in the United States
Pages 57-76
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From page 57... ...
But only in the past hundred years or so have we come to accept the modern concept of nutrition that human life depends on a steady intake of a variety of specific dietary components in defined amounts.
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From page 58... ...
Combined, these 6- heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes mellitus, chronic liver disease and cirrhosis, and atherosclerosis accounted for nearly 1.5 million deaths in 1987, nearly 70 percent of all deaths in the United States that year (see Figure 4.~. Alcohol ingestion plays a role in two leading causes of death accidents and suicide.
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From page 59... ...
All others (2.2%) 1.4% 1.2% 1 1.1% Total number of deaths = 2,125,100 35.7% FIGURE 4.1 Estimated deaths and percent of total deaths for the 10 leading causes of death in the United States, 1987.
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From page 60... ...
This chapter will explain what these diseases are, who gets them, and- when known how they develop. The next five chapters will show how various nutritional factors play important roles in the development of these major chronic diseases.
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From page 61... ...
. EDIT particles carry about 60 to 70 percent of the cholesterol circulating through the blood stream, and HDL particles hold between 20 and 30 percent of the total serum cholesterol.
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From page 62... ...
When a coronary artery becomes blocked, usually when a clot forms at a plaque deposit, the tissues downstream from the obstruction die, and this is called a myocardial infarction, or a heart attack. About one-third of all people who suffer a heart attack die suddenly because the heart simply stops beating with any regularity.
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From page 63... ...
The death rate from heart disease has also dropped, thanks in part to improved medical treatment and because fewer people are smoking cigarettes. PERIPHERAL ARTERY DISEASE Muscle damage from atherosclerosis can also happen in the chest, abdomen, legs, and feet, a disorder known as peripheral artery disease.
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From page 64... ...
About 2.7 million people in the United States have atherosclerosis of brain arteries, and in 1987 nearly 150,000 people died from a stroke, making it the third leading cause of death. Another 350,000 survive a stroke each year, and all told there are about 2 million stroke survivors in the United States.
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From page 65... ...
The second major element is high blood pressure, also known as hypertension. High blood pressure damages the heart, kidneys, and nervous system and increases the risk for heart attack, stroke, peripheral artery disease, and kidney disease.
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From page 66... ...
High blood pressure is more common among black adults than white adults and is especially high in black women. Because of widespread publicity about the dangers of high blood pressure, the number of undiagnosed cases has dropped in the past quarter of a century, and more and more people are controlling their high blood pressure successfully.
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From page 67... ...
in addition, almost a million new cases of cancer were diagnosed that year. Cancer rates tend to be higher in the northeast United States and lower in rural areas, except for stomach cancer, where the reverse is true.
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From page 68... ...
Depending on where the cells are located, specific symptoms appear. Doctors diagnose cancer in many ways, but the ultimate diagnosis comes after a sample of the suspect cells is removed from the body and examined under a microscope; cancer cells have a characteristic appearance that distinguishes them from normal cells.
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From page 69... ...
This can lead, over many years, to kidney disease, atherosclerosis, heart attack, stroke, gangrene, and other complications including blindness. In fact, diabetes is the third leading cause of blindness in the United States.
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From page 70... ...
Researchers have found that fasting blood sugar levels tend to increase as body weight increases, but exactly how these risk factors contribute to the development of noninsulin-clepenclent diabetes is still the subject of research. OBESITY For more than 50 years, life insurance companies have pointed out that greatly increased body weight is associated with an above-average death rate.
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From page 71... ...
Body mass index is calculated as follows: body weight (in kilograms) divided by the square of the height (in meters)
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From page 72... ...
Another way of judging whether you are too fat or too thin is to compare your weight and height to a table based on body mass index and presented in the measurements we are used to using feet and inches for height and pounds for weight. The weights for heights shown in Table 4.2 are the suggested ranges based on the body mass indexes in Table 4.~.
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From page 73... ...
coronary heart disease, and diabetes than people who tend to deposit fat in their hips and thighs called the "femero-gluteal" area. The most common method for determining fat distribution is called the waist-to-hip ratio.
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From page 74... ...
National Academy Press, Washington, D.C. Waist-to-hip ratios close to or higher than one are linked to a greater risk for several chronic diseases.
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From page 75... ...
During that period, women can lose between 2 and 5 percent of their bone each year. About 15 to 20 million people in the United States, the majority of them elderly women, have osteoporosis.
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From page 76... ...
There are two major varieties of gallstones: those composed primarily of cholesterol and those made of various pigments derived from hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying substance of red blood cells. About 80 percent of the gallstones in the United States are the cholesterol variety.
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