Types of Chronic Illness

 

Welcome to Chronic Illness Chat. I'm Julie Hamilton.

Today we're going to talk about the different kinds or the different types of chronic illness, but if you remember what a chronic illness is, it's a health condition or a disease long-lasting in its effects and come with time. And the long lasting, or the chronic part of it comes where it is longer than a couple months, six months to year. Some people say it's six months, some people say it's a year but the duration is long term. And you need to be seeking ongoing medical treatment.  You should be seeing a doctor on a regular basis.

Basically, there's four categories that they consider for a chronic illness. The 4 categories are cardiovascular, cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory. Then there's chronic illnesses.  Chronic illnesses are heart disease, stroke diabetes, cancer, tobacco related issues, alcohol related issues, Alzheimer's, and arthritis.

There are also autoimmune diseases on top of that.  Autoimmune diseases can be Hashimoto’s, lupus, Addison's, and Graves’ disease. And that list goes on.

Then there are muscular skeletal diseases. Examples of this are tendonitis, carpal tunnel, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and fibromyalgia.

You could also have central nervous system chronic illnesses, which are Alzheimer's, Bell’s Palsy, cerebral palsy epilepsy, MS, and Parkinson's.

So, as you can see, the list of chronic illnesses is wide range and can go on and on and on. And thank goodness we are not the doctors that have to diagnose or treat them. We as HR managers and directors just need to learn how to work with individuals that have those chronic illnesses.

Let me know if you have questions.