Primary causes of ill health include headaches, sadness, and low back pain: study

According to a recent international study that was published in The Lancet journal, headaches, depressive disorders, and low back pain are the leading causes of ill health that negatively affect quality of life.

The research discovered that while people are living longer worldwide, “they aren’t spending all those years in good health” after analyzing healthy life expectancy during the first two years of the COVID-19 epidemic. Co-first author Damian Santomauro, an affiliate assistant professor of the Health Metrics Sciences at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington in the United States, said, “We see that the existing treatments aren’t working well to address low back pain, which is the leading cause of poor health globally.”

“To manage this significant contributor to the global disease burden, we need better tools,” he said.

Santomauro, on the other hand, said that treatment for depressive disorders may include either counseling, medicine, or both, used in conjunction for a sufficient period of time. “Unfortunately, most people around the world have little to no access to treatment,” he said.

“It’s imperative to make sure that everyone with this disorder can get treatment, especially in light of the significant increase in depression that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.

In spite of the fact that males were more likely than women to pass away from COVID-19, the researchers that looked at how men and women reacted to the virus discovered that women were more affected than men in terms of long-term COVID and mental illnesses.

It was discovered that women were more likely than males to have a protracted COVID-19 illness, and that their likelihood of developing depression increased significantly throughout the pandemic.

The Global Burden of Diseases (GBD) study 2021, which examined data from 204 nations and territories, provided the researchers with revised estimations. The GBD research, which is coordinated by the IHME, is the biggest and most extensive attempt to measure health loss across time and across locations.