Chronic Vs Acute Diseases: 5 Facts About Chronic Diseases Everyone Should Know

Health problems vary with every individual and every disease has its own set of conditions to deal with. We do know that some health problems last for a few days whereas other can go on for months and years. Hence it is important to diagnose and differentiate between chronic and regular health conditions for proper treatment and consultation. People suffer from many chronic conditions which do not have many symptoms and do not seem severe but they can grow to be very problematic. Hence people near them need to be cautious and put some effort to understand what they are going through to make their lives easier.

Chronic Vs Acute Conditions

To understand the difference between these two, we spoke to Dr. Sumeet Nigam, General Physician from Sahara Hospital, Lucknow. He told us that acute conditions are those that happen suddenly like viral infection, fever, malaria, etc. On the other hand chronic diseases and health conditions are long lasting and their symptoms develop gradually over time. Also chronic problems usually worsen with time and get more severe for example Crohn’s Disease. Acute or chronic conditions are determined by the period of treatment, its type and how long is the disease meant to last. 

5 Facts About Chronic Conditions That People Should Understand

1. Symptoms of Chronic Infections Are Less Likely To Be Visible

Chronic conditions are experienced for a long term and people are under medication for that particular problem. Hence mostly there are no evident symptoms to determine the health issue, but it can be severe depending on the disease. A very common example for this is Asthma, it is a chronic disease of whose symptoms are usually not visible until there is some problems. Hence people around them need to understand that they need little help to cope up and live with chronic illness. 

2. It’s not Just in the head

Many people assume that chronic conditions are just a perception of being ill which is not true. Nobody likes to feel unhealthy and irritated by health issues at any point of time, so a person going through a chronic health condition is not pretending but is actually trying to express his problems. Even tests have confirmed that patients of chronic conditions need extra care with their diet, routine and lifestyle. Also they tend to get more anxious than normal healthy people.

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3. Chronic Diseases changes lifestyle

Chronic conditions last for many months and years because of which many habits of the person also change. Sometimes they can no longer have their favourite meals, go for adventure sports or take part in social activities, etc. Hence rather than avoiding them, try to include chronic patients with you. Rheumatoid arthritis can be a very good example as person may with time lose his strength and ability to walk properly, hence it is advised to be supportive and help them in their lifestyle.

4. No Two experiences with chronic conditions are same

Every disease and illness needs to be treated differently. Hence it is not that people going through chronic conditions need to be treated in the same way as other. There are variety of chronic disease and disorder that experience varied symptoms, problems, etc that needs to be thoroughly understood. You cannot just behave in same manner with person having Inflammatory bowel syndrome and other having type-2 diabetes. The fact is that chronic illnesses are very unpredictable and frustrating at times. 

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5. It is co-related to other diseases

In majority of the cases, people having chronic diseases are linked with other health problems also. If not, they have a higher tendency to fall for other health problems as well. For example risk of tuberculosis increases if you have HIV/AIDS which is a chronic disease. This happens because of reduced resistance of immune system that manifests poor health. Similarly, other chronic diseases also have link to other health conditions and increased risk to fall for it.

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