Dear Future Healthcare Workers,
Climate change is a major issue
in today’s world for many reasons and although many don’t think about it, one
of those main reasons is our health. Climate change will alter our wellbeing
and result in an increase in health related problems.
Rising temperatures could cause an
increase in cardiovascular issues. This is because the temperature change can result
in physiological changes such as dehydration and an increase in the viscosity
of the blood causing the heart work harder. High temperatures are also related
to a decrease in heart variability that is a part of how well the heart is
functioning. Especially with the elderly this is a cause of concern since their
heart is unable to work at this level.
In addition, rising temperatures will
result in our autonomic nervous system to function differently because the
outside environment will be altered from what it was previously. It will also
make the spread for infectious diseases easier and lengthen the time it is able
to spread.
Finally, we have already started
to see the effects of pollution. Asthma is becoming more and more common. From
2001 to 2011 the rate of asthma grew 28 percent. Pollution, of course, is not
the only cause of asthma but could be in addition to change in pollination
patterns (climate change also) or the decreased disease resistance due to over
sanitization (still a hypothesis).
There are a lot of upcoming
challenges to think about for you future of healthcare workers and climate
change should be at the top of the list. It will affect our environment and the
way we live. To make a difference we should first think of ways to prevent a
further impact of climate change and then focus on how to handle the future
epidemics that may head our way.
http://www.healthline.com/health-news/children-allergies-and-asthma-on-the-rise-110813
http://www.livescience.com/35635-climate-change-health-countdown.html
Interesting stuff. The primary problem with gaining support for movements to work towards slowing climate change is getting to people to care. The every-day person doesn't necessarily have time to devote to researching how this growing issue could affect THEM. Even if people are aware of and educated on the problem, the many people find it hard to grasp why it is relevant to their daily lives. This is probably a huge issue in the healthcare field due to the physicians, nurses, etc thinking that climate change may not directly affect their field of interest. Seeing as CVD is the leading causes of death in the US, it makes environmental changes important to everyone. This shows that everything works full circle and will come back to bite us if we can't take action. This is also an excellent example of one of the main issues of modern healthcare: general education. As we have been told in several classes: the best medicine is prevention.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm