A Quote by David Sheff

If you subscribe to the idea that #? addiction is a disease, it is startling to see how many of these children - paranoid, anxious, bruised, tremulous, withered, in some cases psychotic - are seriously ill, slowly dying. We'd never allow such a scene if these kids had any other disease. They would be in a hospital, not on the streets.
Addiction is a symptom of not growing up. I know people think it's a disease... If you have a brain tumor, if you have cancer, that's a disease. To say that an addiction is a disease is not fair to the real diseases of the world.
It seemed that the problem of Americans overdosing and dying from drug addiction was being described as bad people, particularly kids, who were abusing good drugs. But Sheila Nevins, the president of HBO Documentary Films, and I were particularly interested in finding out the stories of people and families who had been ravaged by this disease of addiction and understanding what really was happening. What we found was that, and let's not make any mistake about it, this is an epidemic of addiction.
According to the comprehensive Global Burden of Disease project, the leading risk factors for ill health and premature death are linked to lifestyle, what we eat and drink and how much we exercise. Disease prevention does not occur in the hospital. We need the whole of society to be involved.
In too many cases, the moms, the dads, the sisters and brothers of children with cancer must stand by a hospital bed and watch helplessly as this horrible disease consumes the life of an innocent child.
Muscular dystrophy ... was never seen until Duchenne described it in the 1850s. By 1860, after his original description, many hundreds of cases had been recognised and described, so much so that Charcot said: 'How is it that a disease so common, so widespread, and so recognisable at a glance - a disease which has doubtless always existed - how is it that it is recognised only now? Why did we need M. Duchenne to open our eyes?'
Everybody tells you over and over again that addiction is a disease. But when I read Nic's book I understood not just that this is a disease, but what the disease means.
In South Africa one in four women have AIDS. When you are there it is shocking. So many people are dying from the disease and the same number are getting the disease each year. My main goal was to learn and call attention to some of the things that were happening.
Many physical illnesses are associated with depression and anxiety, including heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, stroke, kidney disease, lung disease, dementia and cancer.
We say that one gets cancer, or a cold, or kidney disease. One would never think to say that one is cancer. But we say that one is depressed, or bipolar, or schizophrenic. A disease of the body is a condition. But a disease of the mind, we think, is a state of being. We no longer believe, as we did 250 years ago, that the mentally ill are animals, but we are not yet ready to grant that they are fully human either.
According to the Western model, pregnancy is a disease, menopause is a disease, and even getting pregnant is a disease. Dangerous drugs and devices are given to women, but not to men- just for birth control. I've reached the conclusion that to many doctors BEING A WOMAN IS A DISEASE
Addiction is a chronic disease of the brain and it's one that we have to treat the way we would any other chronic illness: with skill, with compassion and with urgency.
I had scarcely met Stephen, and then one Saturday I met some old friends for coffee, and they were saying, 'Gosh it's terrible about Stephen, isn't it?' They told me that he had been in St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London having horrible tests and then had been diagnosed with an atypical form of a rare disease - motor neurone disease.
There's traditionally been two different ways of seeing addiction. Either it's a sin and you're a horrible bad person and you are just choosing to be hedonist or it's a chronic progressive disease. And while I certainly believe addiction is a medical problem that should be dealt with by the health system, the way we've conceptualized addiction as a disease is not actually accurate, and it has unfortunately become stigmatizing and it's also created a lot of hopelessness in a lot of people.
When I heard that heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined - when I heard that, I knew. The other thing that's very important is that heart disease...is preventable. There are some specific lifestyle changes that women can make: losing weight, not smoking, exercising, eating healthy foods. Knowing the risk factors: high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, [being] overweight. And if you have heart disease in your family, you should see your doctor. Because this disease is preventable.
Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.
People still think of AIDS as a shame-based disease, it's a sexually transmitted disease, and you're either gay or you're a prostitute or an intravenous drug user. And so a lot of people are still very bigoted about this disease. It's such a treatable disease. It's so - the end is in sight for this disease, medically.
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