Why are there more and more chronic diseases treated?

At present, chronic diseases have become a global medical problem. Is it necessary to make a deep reflection on the current concept of prevention and treatment of chronic diseases? Should we continue to use western health concepts and standards for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases? What kind of health concepts and strategies for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases do healthy China need? The global medical community has not found a systematic, scientific and effective method for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases, the full name of which is chronic non-communicable diseases, and chronic diseases have become a major threat to human health. Health issues are an important part of global governance, which shows that the world attaches great importance to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and its determination to go all out. According to the report on Nutrition and chronic Diseases of Chinese residents (2020) released by the Information Office of the State Council on December 23, 2020, the global medical community has not found a systematic, scientific and effective method for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. It further defines the main objectives, strategies and measures for the prevention and control of chronic diseases in the new era.

The "war" of chronic diseases on human beings is becoming more and more serious, which not only leads to complex social problems caused by the superposition of human pain, disability and mental retardation, until it drags down a country's health care system, but also has a braking effect on a country's economy. At present, chronic diseases have become a global medical problem.

What is puzzling is: the global development of medical science and technology is changing with each passing day, but why are there more and more chronic diseases treated? Is it necessary to make a deep reflection on the current concept of prevention and treatment of chronic diseases? Should we continue to use western health concepts and standards for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases? What kind of health concepts and strategies for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases do healthy China need?

Chronic diseases have become a major threat to human health, and the global medical community has not found systematic, scientific and effective prevention and treatment methods.

The full name of chronic disease is a kind of chronic non-communicable disease, which is a kind of diseases with hidden onset, long course of disease, lack of exact evidence of infectious biological etiology, complex etiology and some diseases that have not been fully identified. The common chronic diseases are mainly cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and so on.

In September 2011, the United Nations convened a high-level meeting on the prevention and control of chronic diseases and adopted a political declaration: chronic diseases have become a major threat to human health; health issues are an important part of global governance, and governments bear the primary responsibility. And propose to integrate health into all policies. It shows that the world attaches great importance to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and its determination to go all out.

According to the report on Nutrition and chronic Diseases of Chinese residents (2020) released by the Information Office of the State Council on December 23, 2020, chronic diseases accounted for 88.5% of all deaths in China in 2019. Among them, the death rate of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases is 80.7%.

The important reason for the high incidence, frequent occurrence and serious consequences of chronic diseases is that the global medical community has not found a systematic, scientific and effective method for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. This is also a serious dilemma facing the development of human society at present.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and put forward six changes in chronic diseases as early as 1998. Especially since the 18th CPC National Congress, China has made remarkable achievements in health care, and held important meetings such as the "National Health and Health Congress". The 19th CPC National Congress defined the policy of China's health work in the new era. The State Council has successively issued the outline of the 2030-year Plan for healthy China, the medium-and long-term Plan for the Prevention and Control of chronic Diseases in 2017, and the Action for healthy China (20119-2030), further defining the main objectives, strategies and measures for the prevention and control of chronic diseases in the new era, actively promoting the shift from disease-centered to health-centered, and from attaching importance to clinical technology to basic research. A series of changes from focusing on investing in the top three hospitals to strengthening the grass-roots level have fully demonstrated the care and care of the people's lives and health by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, and laid a solid institutional foundation for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases.

The most advanced medical and health concepts and solutions in the world have also failed to curb the spread of chronic diseases in western societies.

With the rapid development of global medical science and technology, it has moved forward from traditional medicine to biomedicine and molecular medicine; the research and development of new drugs has shifted from single target to multi-target mode; from the study of overall physiological function to gene modification and gene editing; clinical medicine can be said to have many names, from surgery, drug and interventional therapy to stem cell repair and substitution, specific and non-specific treatment of immune cells, and so on.

However, it is regrettable that although modern medicine has gone through the road of exploration for more than a century, the understanding of the law of human life activities as a whole is still at the local or fragmented level, and the research and discovery in this field are still blind people touching the elephant. The basic scientific problems about the nature of life have not been systematically revealed.

In particular, medicine has entered the post-genome era, but there is no substantial breakthrough in the cognition and treatment of most diseases in modern medicine.

Nobel laureate and "father of DNA" Watson declared in 2013 that it was "worthless" to use genetic sequences to treat cancer and other diseases for years. Over-reliance on treatment options at the genetic level, the treatment of some diseases is likely to be retrogressive in general and adds a lot of cost. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, health care spending in the United States soared from 0 billion to .2 trillion between 1996 and 2020. But nearly half of the population in the United States still suffers from chronic diseases, and 85% of the nation's health spending is spent on people with chronic diseases.

Why is it that nearly half of the population suffers from chronic diseases when medical science and technology are so advanced in the United States? Is it due to insufficient investment in medical and health care? Medical and health expenditure in the United States accounts for 18% of GDP in the United States. Is the environmental pollution serious? The environment of the United States is said to be green mountains and green waters. Is the food safety standard low? The United States boasts the highest food safety standards in the world. Is there no "cure without disease" concept of disease prevention? The concept of disease prevention in all countries in the world is imported from the United States, and even the "5X5" strategy for the prevention and control of chronic diseases (that is, the five major risk attributions of non-communicable diseases-unhealthy diet, tobacco use, air pollution, harmful use of alcohol, lack of physical activity), defined at the third high-level meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, is also cited by the United States.

But whether from the United States or from a global point of view, chronic diseases are still being treated more and more. For example, almost all of the top 10 countries with the highest incidence of cancer are developed countries, not third world countries. The most advanced medical health concepts and solutions in the world have not stopped the spread of chronic diseases in western society, nor in China, so why do we blindly apply western health concepts and standards to prevent and cure chronic diseases? What kind of health concepts and strategies for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases do healthy China need?

Medicine should not treat people as machines. We should strengthen basic research and put forward a Chinese plan for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases.

More than two thousand years ago, the culture of traditional Chinese medicine had a clear explanation for health-"good qi is stored, but evil cannot be done." that is to say, if the resistance of life itself is strong, people are not easy to get sick.

From the point of view of traditional Chinese medicine, the reason why people get sick is that "where evil is put together, its qi must be deficient", that is, the reason why people get sick is the result of the decrease of life's own resistance. If the disease really occurs, it should be "strengthening the upright and dispelling evil", that is, adhering to the medical concept of improving life's own resistance and eliminating pathogenic factors. Historical and practical practice has proved that this is a correct methodology for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases.

From the perspective of holism and system view, the occurrence of chronic diseases is not only a problem at a certain point in the body, but also a systemic risk, which is a steady-state imbalance. Medicine is essentially human science, and human is the unity of body, emotion and will, and the unity of natural biological attributes and emotional social attributes. Medicine can not "disassemble and assemble" people as machines.

Take cancer as an example, cancer is the king of chronic diseases. If we can correctly reveal the etiology and pathogenesis of cancer, we can not only find a breakthrough in the prevention and treatment of cancer, but also find a breakthrough for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases.

Healthy people produce a certain amount of poorly differentiated cells every day, but more than 99.5% of people do not develop cancer. This is because poorly differentiated cells are "recognized, attacked, killed" and cleaned up by T lymphocytes in the immune system of healthy people at any time. Therefore, from the holistic system point of view, maintaining the homeostasis of the immune system is an effective way to prevent cancer.

The occurrence of cancer is mainly caused by two problems, one is the homeostasis imbalance of the body, and the other is the role of pathogenic factors. Accordingly, the treatment of cancer should start from these two aspects: one is to restore homeostasis, that is, to enhance the ability of life to resist disease, which is the basis of disease prevention and treatment, which is called "Fuzheng" in traditional Chinese medicine; and the second is to remove the etiology. Traditional Chinese medicine is called "dispelling evil", that is, using special means to remove, inhibit and kill cancer cells in cancer foci.

However, modern medical treatment of cancer is only aimed at the treatment of cancer foci, rather than allowing life to identify, kill and eliminate cancer cells, which is not comprehensive. What is removed by surgery is only the focus of cancer, and it is impossible to remove the poorly differentiated cells that are not "recognized, attacked, and killed" by the immune system every day; radiotherapy and chemotherapy, targeted therapy, and immunotherapy are also aimed at cancer cells in the focus of cancer. none of these methods can alone restore the homeostasis of the body. Therefore, the results of this local cure are varied, good or bad, resulting in many cancer patients finally losing their money. This is the scientific and social problem worthy of reflection and study on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases at present.

What is gratifying is that the National Health and Health Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, the National Ministry of Science and Technology and other departments have jointly issued the Cancer Prevention and Control implementation Plan (2019-2022). It is believed that the vast number of Chinese medical workers will gather the wisdom of traditional Chinese medicine of the Chinese nation for thousands of years. Strengthening basic research and using modern scientific theories and methods will certainly be able to create a Chinese plan for the prevention and treatment of global chronic diseases.

(the writer is Cong Bin, vice chairman of the Central Committee of Jiusan Society and academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering)

Source: people's Daily online-People's Daily overseas version