For a long time, there has been an expectation that Presidential candidates will release their health information.  Being president is a highly stressful job, and a president who is not fully competent has the tools to do a lot of damage to the country and the world.  As such, there is an expectation among voters that candidates will release health information.  Of course, as with every other expectation, President Trump made a farce of this expectation by releasing medical summaries that were not particularly credible to any neutral observer, but there was so much that was wrong with the Trump campaign in 2016 and the mainstream media tries to avoid the appearance of taking a side that the lack of a real report on Trump’s physical and mental health was only a semi-big deal even on MSNBC.

This week, we had a bit of a health scare with Senator Bernie Sanders.  From every report, Senator Sanders is recovering from his surgery and should be able to resume his campaign.  However, this medical emergency does bring back into sharp focus an underlying issue in the nomination process.  President Trump and the top three candidates for the Democratic nomination (according to the polls) are all in their seventies.  And that means that issues of age and health will be in the background of this campaign.  Unfortunately, a healthy discussion of health is not likely.  But there are several things that should be on the table.

First, heart disease is a serious problem in this country impacting people of all ages.  A heart attack or a stroke can occur at any age.  I have known people who have died from a heart attack in their forties and fifties, and I have known people who have survived a heart attack in their seventies and eighties and have returned to a mostly fully functional life.  While people have become more health conscious in the past several decades, there are a lot of dietary and other factors that contribute to heart disease being one of the top causes of death in the U.S. Continue Reading...