Diseases of affluence

Diseases of affluence are those diseases which are thought to be a result of increasing wealth in a society, in contrast to Diseases of poverty which result from impoverishment.

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Examples

They are thought to include Type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral vascular disease, obesity, certain forms of cancer, autoimmune diseases, asthma, alcoholism, depression and possibly a range or majority of other psychiatric illnesses.

Communicable vs. non-communicable diseases

Some of these illnesses are inter-related, for example obesity is thought to be a partial cause of many other illnesses. They are characterised as being non-communicable diseases, whereas the diseases of poverty tend to be largely communicable either through infection, poor public or environmental health provision, or poor hygiene.

The trend is for these diseases to become more prevalent as starvation and diseases of poverty decline, and as longevity increases. Policy makers are sometimes criticised on sociological grounds for failing to deal with the fact that development could be seen as self-defeating if it means exchanging one set of diseases for another.

Possible causes of the diseases of affluence

Factors associated with the increase of these illnesses appear to be, paradoxically, things which many people would regard as improvements in their lives. They include:

• Increased use of the car
• Less strenuous physical exercise
• Easy accessibility in society to large amounts of low-cost food (relative to the much-lower caloric food availability in a subsistence economy)
  • More food generally, with much less physical exertion expended to obtain a moderate amount of food
  • More high fat and high sugar foods in the diet are common in the affluent developed economies of the late-twentieth century
  • More foods which are processed, cooked, and commercially provided (rather than seasonal, fresh foods prepared locally at time of eating)[1]
• Increased leisure time
• Prolonged periods of inactivity
• Greater use of alcohol and tobacco
• Longer life-spans
  • Reduced exposure to infectious agents throughout life
  • Greater use of antibiotics and vaccines

See also

• Health
• Exercise
• Nutrition
• China project

• Urbanisation
• Westernization
• Diseases of poverty