What’s The Most Common Chronic Condition?

Any individual period of ill health is bad enough, but when you have a chronic condition, managing it can feel like a full-time job.

A chronic condition is an illness or disability which lasts for over six months and has little to no chance of a cure. Instead, the medical focus is on coping with the condition and living the best life possible despite it. Though the condition is rarely a threat to life, it can have a serious impact on the quality of life.

Statistics show that around one in four adults have two or more chronic conditions and up to 50% of the population is struggling with chronic conditions at any one time. While these statistics are somewhat skewed by an aging population – the older you are, the higher the chance of a condition – it is nevertheless a fact that there’s a high chance you, or someone you care about, will have to cope with such a condition at some point in their life.

So, given this reality, what’s the number one, top of the list, most common chronic condition that people have to live with?

It’s multimorbidity.

It’s What Now?

There’s a good chance you’ve never heard that word before, and it sounds pretty alarming what with the “morbid” in there, doesn’t it?

Multimorbidity is the medical term for someone who has multiple chronic conditions. It’s this condition that is by far the most common in the USA. It’s like the boss mode of a video game; you get through the individual levels of singular chronic conditions, but then you have to face down the boss. Fighting multimorbidity is like trying to fill a bucket that’s full of holes; there’s always going to be a leak somewhere.

Why Is Multimorbidity Such A Problem?

It’s relatively easy to cope with a single chronic condition. If you have depression, you can treat depression. If you have a heart problem, you can treat that too. However, when you try and treat multiple issues at once, not only does no one condition get the focus it needs, but they can also irritate one another. This leads to chronic disability due to multiple conditions, with sufferers often needing the advice of Chermol & Fishman due to their inability to work and live normal lives.

Here’s an example of how multiple, unrelated conditions can influence one another:

A patient has sciatica; a nerve problem. They also have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. One of the most-used treatments of OCD is a medication called Clomipramine. One of the most common treatments for sciatica is a medication called Pregabalin. And guess what? You can’t take both of those medications at the same time. So the sufferer has to choose which is most important, and the other condition just has to go without the best treatment for their condition.

How Does This Impact You?

The most obvious way of avoiding multimorbidity is to lead as healthy a lifestyle as possible: exercise often; eat right; talk to your doctor at the sign of any health conditions. If you can nip one condition in the bud before it takes hold, then you have the best chance of preventing them all from stacking up.