Below is a list of the top 5 NCDs. Combined, they represent the leading cause of mortality in the world. And as you will learn in the following posts, many of the causes of these disease are actually preventable! 

Heart disease

Stroke

Cancer

Chronic Respiratory Disease (CRD)

Diabetes

Let’s quickly break down each one so they make more sense to you. 

Heart disease: Any condition that affects the functioning of your heart. A person can be born with a heart defect or develop the disease through poor lifestyle choices that lead to narrowing of the arteries and other factors that put a person at risk for a heart attack.

Stroke: This happens when there is a blockage or an interruption in the blood supply to the brain. Some people recover well from a stroke, others not so much. It depends on how traumatic the blood loss was and where in the brain.

Cancer: According the the National Cancer Institute, cancer is the name given to a collection of related diseases. You’ve likely heard of people getting lung cancer, blood cancer, skin cancer, etc. Cancer is started as a cell that is not performing properly and begins to divide and multiply to eventually form tumors or growths.

(Source: https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/what-is-cancer)

Chronic Respiratory Disease (CRDs): These are diseases of the airways and the lungs. Air pollution, tobacco smoke, and other environmental chemicals are most to blame. You are likely most familiar with asthma as an example of a CRD. Other examples include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), occupational lung diseases and pulmonary hypertension.

(Source: https://www.who.int/respiratory/en/)

Diabetes: This is a disease where the bodies ability to produce or metabolize insulin is impaired. Insulin is needed to manage glucose levels in the blood. There are different types of diabetes. You can learn more on the YSS link on diabetes here.

You can read about each of these separately in the sub-posts that follow except for diabetes and Chronic Respiratory Disease’s (CRDs). CRD’s are a broad range of diseases and so we are going to solely focus on asthma as an example as it is the most common for your age group. Diabetes is covered in Nutrition II, so you can check that out here.