10 Most Common Causes of Death In The US

Things such as shooting deaths make the headlines quite often these days, and spark a lot of very heated, sometimes even rabid, debate that boils down to, "somebody ought to do something".

Well, I don't want to talk about shooting deaths, but, I do want to talk about death, who needs to do something about them, and, what can be done.

I was reading some information on deaths in the United States, and found the following published just a few days ago by Medical News.

The following is a list of the top 10 causes of death in the U.S. in 2014.

    596,577 from heart disease
    576,691 from cancer (malignant neoplasms)
    142,943 from chronic lower respiratory disease
    128,932 from stroke (cerebrovascular diseases)
    126,438 from accidents (unintentional injuries)
    84,974 from Alzheimer's disease
    73,831 from diabetes (diabetes mellitus)
    53,826 from influenza and pneumonia
    45,591 from kidney disease (nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis)
    39,518 from suicide (intentional self-harm)

Total deaths from the top 10 causes for 2014... 1,869,321

Now, the article I was reading went into depth on these statistics, enumerating, for example, how many were male, how many were female. There were other breakdowns as well, but, what interested me was the information included about causes of the causes and possible means of preventing the causes, and/or the deaths.

While things such as heredity and age had parts to play in most of these events, in every case, health and fitness were factors.

To say it another way, poor health and fitness, with poor lifestyle choices which affected these, were major risk factors in all of the top 10 causes of death.

Other studies I have looked at have indicated that as many as half of the deaths from these causes can be prevented by eating properly, getting regular exercise, and making other beneficial lifestyle choices.

I find it interesting that we raise such a fuss over things such as shooting deaths, 11,208 in 2013, according to the CDC, and not seem to get nearly as incensed about the approximately one million deaths which could be prevented with some better lifestyle choices.

Don't think that I am downplaying shooting deaths. Not by any means. The causes of every death need to be addressed, and, if possible, erased so that they are either not found in future statistics, or, at least, are fewer.

However, for this article, I just want to make the point that, if you don't want to wind up being a statistic in future compilations of the 10 most common causes of death in the United States, or elsewhere, for that matter, take a look at your lifestyle and make the changes necessary to stay around longer as a healthier person.