Interconnected diseases
Our metabolism is comprised of biochemical reactions that keep us alive and work together in a coordinated manner that maintains good health. As metabolic coordination disintegrates, we start to age. Pair the disintegration with overnutrition and a sedentary lifestyle, and aging becomes the largest risk factor for most chronic NCDs.
The proportion of people suffering from more than one medical condition at the same time keeps slowly but steadily increasing. In high income countries like the UK or the USA, this multi-morbidity is mostly age-related, and slow demographic change has driven the steady increase in multi-morbidity. This trend will continue, and as multimorbidity has become more prevalent it's been studied more closely. There's been a shift in perception; multi-morbidity used to be thought of as a random collection of diseases and conditions accrued by a person over time. Now, it's starting to be recognized as a smaller set of largely...