Today's BUZZ take a love one to the doctors (112 hits)
It is to often that something has to happen before we realize we could have prevented it. Many of us are afraid of the doc, maybe we have heard scary things like it hurts, lost of love ones in surgery what have you.
Check out these alarming statistics:
Heart Disease: In 1998, coronary heart disease killed 136.3 out of 100,000 African Americans while killing 95.1 per 100,000 whites. There were 42.5 deaths from stroke per 100,000 African Americans versus 23.3 deaths per 100,000 from stroke amongst white adults.
Cancer: African American men are at least 50% more likely to develop lung cancer than white men. African American men also die more often from cancer of the lung and bronchus (100.8 per 100,000) than do white men (70.1 per 100,000).
Diabetes: African Americans have a rate of diabetes of 33.0 per 100,000 compared to a rate of 23.2 in whites.
AIDS : Almost ten times as many African Americans (age 13 and older) contracted AIDS in 1998 (84.2 per 100,000) as whites in that age group. The good news is that much of the spread of AIDS can be stopped by simple lifestyle decisions.
This is enough for us to wake up and take our brothers, fathers, sons, uncles, any man in our lives to the doc and see the benefits of having them around a little longer:-)
I lost my grandfather to prostate and diabetes. He was a proud man, he never disclosed his illness. My grandmother just so happened to discover, but it was to late, it spreaded. At that time we didn't have the individuals like Tom Joyner spreading the good news about prevention.