How many life threatening diseases are there

Many serious health problems seem to develop unexpectedly, upsetting your life out of the blue. The emotional upheaval can make it difficult to function or think straight, and even lead to mood disorders such as anxiety and depression.

There are steps you can take to better cope with your new situation, ease the stress and mental anguish that often accompany serious illness, and find a way to navigate this challenging new journey.

Whatever your situation, you should know that experiencing a wide range of difficult emotions is a normal response to a potentially life-changing situation. Everything changes when you learn that you have a life-threatening illness. Perhaps you cried, sought out the comfort of loved ones, or did your best to distract yourself or pretend like nothing had changed.

Or maybe you simply froze, unable to process how your life had suddenly changed out of all recognition. Or perhaps you even jumped into action and started tackling your health problem head on. Give yourself time to process the news and be kind to yourself as you adjust to your new situation.

Allow yourself to feel. Trying to ignore your feelings will only increase stress and maybe even delay recovery.

Be patient with the pace of treatment and recovery. After receiving an initial diagnosis or suffering a major health event, it can take time and an array of tests and consultations before your medical team settles on an appropriate course of treatment.

But scouring the Internet and relying on what can often be inaccurate or scary information will only make you feel worse. Be open to change. Rationally, no one would consider having a heart attack or receiving a cancer diagnosis as ever having any positive consequences. But it can happen. Some people diagnosed with life-threatening conditions do undergo a change in perspective that focuses them on the important things in their lives—those things that add meaning and purpose.

Negative emotions such as anger or guilt can even sometimes have a positive effect, motivating you to meet treatment goals, for example. Keeping your mind open may help you to find the positives and better cope emotionally in even the darkest situations.

Facing a life-threatening illness can leave you feeling alone and cut off from even those closest to you. Whatever your situation, now is not the time to retreat into your shell.

As well as providing practical assistance, such as driving you to medical appointments or aiding you with household chores, having people to lean on is essential to your emotional well-being. Staying connected to others and continuing to enjoy social activities can make a world of difference in your mood and outlook as you undergo treatment. A number of studies have demonstrated a higher survival rate following a cancer diagnosis, for example, among people who are married compared to those who are not.

This can likely be attributed to the greater social support offered by a spouse and children. After a serious diagnosis or health event, who you choose to confide in, lean on, and the amount of information you elect to share about your medical situation are always very personal decisions. But trying to tough it out alone will only deny those who care about you the chance to offer support.

Reaching out to them will only strengthen the bond between you. Look for support from friends and loved ones who are good listeners.

Make face-time a priority. Connecting face to face with someone who cares about you can play a huge role in relieving stress and boosting your mood. Join a support group. Seek out a peer support program. There are many disease-specific organizations that can match you with a person who has survived the same type of medical condition. Many of us find ourselves alone at some point in life. As well as taking advantage of the support groups and peer support programs mentioned above, there are also plenty of things you can do to expand your social network to find support —even at this difficult time.

Like many patients, you may think that bottling up your emotions, putting on a brave face, or forcing yourself to be positive and cheerful will provide the best outcome to your illness.

It may even have the opposite effect. A review of studies into the coping styles of patients with cancer concluded that being cheerful has little effect on the success of treatment or rate of recurrence. In fact, bottling up your emotions may only increase your stress levels, elevate the amount of pain you feel, and make you more susceptible to anxiety and depression. Facing your emotions on the other hand, even the most painful and fearful ones, can help you to ease your stress and suffering, better come to terms with your condition, and find greater peace and physical fortitude as you work towards recovery.

Many of us are taught in childhood to bottle up our feelings. We internalize emotions such as fear, grief, and anger or we explode inappropriately, which serves only to fuel rather than expend unpleasant feelings. You can start by listening to your body. When you experience a strong emotion, you likely also feel it somewhere in your body. Perhaps your stomach tightens up every time you feel anxious or afraid, for example, or your shoulder muscles get tense when you feel a sense of grief or loss.

By concentrating on these physical sensations, you can start to explore your emotions rather than trying to ignore or repress them. Lower respiratory tract infections among american Indian and Alaska Native children and the general population of U.

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Acta Gastroenterol Belg. De Silvestro G. Int J Artif Organs. Acute liver failure: summary of a workshop. Kortsalioudaki C. Safety and efficacy of N-acetylcysteine in children with non-acetaminophen-induced acute liver failure. A parasite carried by blood-sucking mosquitoes causes the disease, which is first characterized by fever, chills and flu-like symptoms before progressing on to more serious complications.

By , the disease was eliminated from the U. A subsequent WHO campaign to eradicate malaria was successful only in some places, and the goal was downgraded to reducing transmission of disease, according to the U. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The WHO has distributed so-called long-lasting insecticidal nets in order to reduce bites from malaria-carrying mosquitoes, including in Cambodia shown in image.

A seasonal, respiratory infection, flu is responsible for about 3 million to 5 million cases of severe illness, and about , to , deaths a year across the globe, according to the World Health Organization.

Periodically, however, the viral infection becomes much more devastating: A pandemic in killed about 50 million people worldwide. As became apparent from "swine flu" and "bird flu" scares in recent years, some influenza viruses can jump between species. Potentially fatal, tuberculosis or "TB" is caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis , which usually attacks the lungs and causes the signature bloody coughs. In patients suffering from an advanced stage of TB, you can see the effects in a lung X-ray shown in image.

The bacterium does not make everyone it infects sick, and up to one-third of the world's population currently carries the bacterium without showing symptoms. At the end of , about While many of the worst offenders on this disease list have a long-standing relationship with humans, HIV is a recent arrival. HIV's decimating effect on certain immune system cells was first documented in By destroying part of the immune system , HIV leaves its victims vulnerable to all sorts of opportunistic diseases.

Cholera causes acute diarrhea that if left untreated can kill within hours. People catch the disease by eating or drinking substances containing the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The bacteria tend to contaminate food and water through infected feces. Since it can take 12 hours to 5 days to show symptoms, people can unwittingly spread the disease through their feces. Thanks to improved sanitation, cases of cholera have been rare in industrialized nations for the last years, but worldwide it kills between 21, and , individuals every year, the WHO estimates.

During the 19th century, however, cholera spread from its home in India, causing six pandemics that killed millions of people on all continents, according to the World Health Organization. During a cholera epidemic in Peru in , a hospital waiting room shown in image was converted to an emergency cholera ward. More recently, a cholera outbreak in Haiti, which began after that country's devastating earthquake, had sickened more than people and killed nearly 9,, according to a report published in in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

No longer a significant threat in the United States, rabies is still a deadly problem in other areas of the world. Rabies causes "tens of thousands" of deaths every year in countries in Africa and Asia, according to the WHO. Approximately two people die yearly in the U. The initial symptoms of rabies can be hard to detect in humans, as they mimic that of the flu and include general weakness, discomfort and fever.

But as the disease progresses, patients may experience delirium, abnormal behavior, hallucinations and insomnia, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC. To date, fewer than 10 people who have contracted rabies and started to exhibit symptoms have survived.

However, a rabies vaccine does exist and is usually very effective in both preventing infection with the virus and treating infected individuals before they begin to show symptoms. Pneumonia might not conjure up the same dread as diseases like rabies or smallpox, but this lung infection can be deadly, especially for those older than 65 or younger than 5. The disease can be caused by bacteria, a virus or a combination of both, according to Dr.

A person can also get pneumonia from a fungal infection, parasites or reactions to certain medicines, Adalja told Live Science in September Rotavirus, the most common cause of viral gastroenteritis inflammation of the stomach and intestines , is a diarrheal disease that can be deadly. In , rotavirus killed , children under the age of 5 globally, according to the WHO. About 22 percent of those deaths occurred in India alone; and overall most of the deaths occur in children living in low-income countries.

The virus causes dehydration, brought upon by severe, watery diarrhea and vomiting. There are four rotavirus vaccines that are considered highly effective at preventing the disease, the WHO says. Though rare, Ebola virus disease EVD is an often fatal infection caused by one of the five strains of the Ebola virus.

The virus spreads very rapidly, overcoming the body's immune response and causing fever, muscle pain, headaches, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Some who contract Ebola also bleed from the nose and mouth in the late stages of the disease — a condition known as hemorrhagic syndrome. The Ebola virus is spread from person to person through bodily fluids, and a healthy person can contract the virus by coming into contact with an infected person's blood or secretions or by touching surfaces like clothing or bedding containing these fluids.

The largest outbreak of Ebola began in West Africa in When the outbreak ended in , approximately 11, people had died in the outbreak, with 28, suspected and confirmed cases of the virus reported, according to the CDC. That outbreak, which has infected 3, people and killed 2, as of February , is still ongoing.

It's classified as a Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy TSE — transmissible because it can be spread from cattle to humans and spongiform because it causes a characteristic "spongy" degeneration of brain tissue.

Between and March , approximately cases of vCJD were reported in the United Kingdom and several other countries. Most people who had the disease prior to then acquired it sporadically or because of a particular gene mutation linked to the disease. And about 5 percent of all reported cases resulted from accidental transmission of the disease via contaminated surgical equipment or certain eye and brain tissue transplants.

Those with the variant version of the disease tend to exhibit psychiatric symptoms, including depression , apathy or anxiety. Marburg virus belongs to the Filovirus family of viruses, whose defining characteristic are the filamentous shapes of the viral particles. The disease it causes, Marburg virus disease MVD , is spread from person to person through bodily fluids, much like Ebola.

Marburg virus has other things in common with Ebola, as well. It's transferred to humans by fruit bats belonging to the Pteropodidae family, and it can cause viral hemorrhagic fever in some patients. Marburg virus was first identified in Germany in after lab workers who had handled infected monkeys imported from Uganda became sick with the virus, according to the WHO.