How Should We Address Those Who Are “Neither Sick Nor Healthy”?
In the past, bacterial and viral infections were among the leading causes of death in Japan. However, with the development of Japanese society, these have significantly decreased.
Replacing them, chronic diseases have become more prevalent. Conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and cancer are considered types of chronic diseases.
Chronic diseases progress very slowly, so by the time they are diagnosed, the illness is often quite advanced.
Hospitals generally cannot provide treatment without a specific diagnosis. Therefore, “How should we deal with individuals who are not yet ill but are also not entirely healthy?” has become a pressing issue for healthcare professionals.
As people age, their physical strength and stress tolerance tend to decrease, putting them in a pre-care state known as frailty.
Frailty can manifest in various forms, such as physical or mental frailty. Particularly, the decline in muscle mass and strength is referred to as sarcopenia.
When I was working as a respiratory physician at a general hospital, I frequently encountered elderly patients who were brought in with aspiration pneumonia. This condition occurred when weakened muscles made it difficult for them to swallow food properly, causing food to mistakenly enter the lungs.
The weakened throat function caused by frailty is challenging to recover, and in some cases, we had to perform a procedure known as gastrostomy, where a hole is made in the stomach to provide direct nutritional support, to return the patient to a nursing home.
Whether frailty should be considered a disease or a natural phenomenon is one of the difficult distinctions to make.
Once You Step into the “Red Zone,” There’s No Turning Back
People who develop chronic diseases find their health gradually deteriorating, and by the time they notice, they have lost both their physical and mental strength.
However, in modern society, even if one’s health is lost, it is possible to extend life through artificial means, such as being connected to a ventilator, using life support systems, or, as previously mentioned, creating a gastrostomy tube.
As artificial means extend human lifespans, more people are living for several years in an unhealthy state until their lives come to an end. This has led to the concept of “lifespan applies to health too = health span.”