Study shows the average child is now chronically ill

(NaturalNews) Advocates of conventional medicine often try to claim that pharmaceutical drugs, vaccines, and other modern "health" interventions are responsible for extending the average lifespan and improving overall quality of life. But a 2011 study published in the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics tells a much different story, revealing that today's children are becoming progressively sicker with more than half now stricken with some type of chronic illness.

The study's original aim was to assess the overall health of American children by comparing disease rates to factors like access to healthcare, race and ethnicity, state of residence, and special needs status. But in the process, researchers unintentionally exposed a shocking reality that has received little, if any, mainstream attention -- roughly half of the youth population aged 17 and younger suffers from at least one of the 20 most common chronic health conditions.

"Overall, the study reported that 43 percent of children suffer from at least one of the 20 conditions considered -- when obesity and developmental delays are not included," wrote Heidi Stevenson for Gaia Health about the revelation. Such conditions include developmental delays, allergies, learning disabilities, asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), ear infections, migraine headaches, speech problems, digestive disorders, depression, autism, and diabetes.

But when obesity or being overweight are also accounted for, this percentage jumps by more than 10 percent to 54.1 percent, illustrating a serious and ever-worsening health epidemic in America. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the number of obese children between the ages of six and 11 has more than tripled since 1980. Rates of asthma, food allergies, learning disabilities, autism, and many other health conditions have also risen dramatically among the younger population over the past three decades.

You can read the actual study here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21570014

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/039093_children_chronic_illness_health_improvement.html#ixzz2Ksgo7h30