You might not be thinking about death at this point. Life is promising and you’ve got a fair idea of what you’d like to do in the next 5 to 10 years, and even if you don’t, you’re sure that you’ll figure it out on the way. However, when you’re busy living your life, you might forget to listen to the warning signs that your body is giving you. For example, a little twinge in your side or an unexplained rash might be relegated to the back of your mind as you go about your daily life. You wait for the anomaly to get unbearably painful before you finally drag yourself to your doctor.
Those more hyper-vigilant people who visit the doctor to get every single thing checked out have an advantage when it comes to early interventions for serious conditions. However, there are a number of diseases that you might not even be aware of that can slowly start to kill you before you even realize they’re there. Below are some of the most deadly diseases that can kill you silently.
This is a rare disorder that has some alarming symptoms. Those who suffer from this disorder stop breathing multiple times during the night as their air passage gets constricted, either due to the brain signaling the throat muscles to relax or because of some sort of obstruction in the air passage. If the person’s throat constricts for long enough, they could suffocate.
There’s no way for a person to know that they have this condition unless someone else notices it while they’re sleeping. While there might be some difficulty falling asleep and tiredness, or the person might suddenly wake up choking and gasping for air, not a lot of people exhibit symptoms that warrant a visit to the doctor.
2. Mesothelioma
This is a cancer of the abdomen, heart, or lungs that occurs as a result of prolonged exposure to asbestos. The problem with this disease is that the symptoms can appear 20 to 50 years after the first exposure to asbestos. The prognosis for people who have mesothelioma is grim, because the tumors grow on the lining of your heart, abdomen, or lungs, making them hard to remove.
3. Aneurysms
This is a condition in which a major blood vessel becomes enlarged and weakened until it bursts and causes hemorrhaging that can lead to death. They commonly occur in the aorta, brain, legs, and spleen. It’s difficult to predict if an aneurysm will occur unless a CT scan or ultrasound is carried out to determine if there’s swelling in a blood vessel.
Certain types of hepatitis can infect people for up to two decades before serious symptoms occur. This disease involves inflammation of the liver, and it’s one of the leading causes of liver cancer. People can get this disease through excessive alcohol consumption, drug use, consuming contaminated water and food, or through sexual contact with an infected person. Some of the more common symptoms of this disease include jaundice, fatigue, and muscle aches.
5. Hypertension
Hypertension, also known as high blood pressure, dramatically raises your risk of strokes, heart disease, and even death. Hypertension is deadly because there are no visible or palpable symptoms until something serious happens. One of the many ways this disease can kill you is through kidney failure, heart attacks, and aneurysms.
6. Uterine Cancer
Many women who have uterine cancer dismiss the symptoms as irregular menstrual bleeding caused by a variety of other factors or conditions that aren’t deadly. The tumors of uterine cancer grow on the endometrium and lead to abnormal vaginal bleeding, which exceptionally heavy periods can be indicative of. Getting a Pap smear test regularly can help detect this deadly disease before it’s too late.
This cancer is feared by doctors because of the way it silently spreads to other organs in the body without alerting the person who has it. Some of the symptoms resemble conditions like depressions, stress, and irritable bowel syndrome. The abdominal pain and loss of appetite caused by ovarian cancer are often mistaken for intestinal conditions.
8. Adult Onset Diabetes
The symptoms of adult-onset diabetes, more commonly known as type 2 diabetes, are extremely mild. Millions of people in the world who have the condition are unaware of it, simply because the serious symptoms don’t manifest until it’s quite advanced. By this time, the person is already at an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, stroke, and organ damage.
9. Cardiovascular Diseases
Symptoms leading up to a heart attack can appear nearly 4 weeks before an actual attack occurs, leading people to seek medical help and a diagnosis. However, strangely, a large number of people who experience a heart attack do not report any chest pain before the attack, and a large number didn’t feel chest pain while they were having an attack. They merely reported feeling tired, sleepless, and short of breath.
10. Obesity
This is a condition rather than a disease, but it does significantly raise the risk for a host of other diseases. For example, cancer of the thyroid, strokes, cardiovascular diseases, and type 2 diabetes have all been linked to obesity. It’s estimated that nearly 3 million adults die every year due to complications that arise from being overweight, with heart disease being a leading cause of death.
Source: thedailynet
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