Predeath

Diagnosis of ‘pre-diseases’ is a growing trend

FEELING A bit left out because you are disease-free? Perhaps coffee mornings or lunches are somewhat one-sided as you listen to the health adventures of friends or colleagues?

There is a growing trend to diagnose people with “pre-diseases”. If you are about to develop diabetes, then you are “pre-diabetic”. And if you’re on the verge of being told you have high blood pressure, then you have “pre-hypertension”.

When you Google pre-disease, one of the first references to pop up is a website called predisease.com. This is its opening blurb: “Pre-disease is early disease. Disease has already begun and the complications and co-morbidities have started in the body. This is the stage when the body’s optimum balance or homeostasis is being disturbed. For example, in pre-diabetes, damage to kidneys, eyes, heart and nervous system have already begun and will progressively worsen, if not treated. When your cholesterol levels are slightly elevated, inflammation and damage to the coronary arteries has started with accumulation of plaque and this progressively worsens, if not treated.”

Scroll on and you will find how to order pre-emptive meds, special “pre-disease” therapies “to arrest the progression before it becomes irreversible”.

We all have a fatal condition: it’s pre-death, The Irish Time, april 24, 2012.