The demographic timebomb is ticking and so is the future for LLLT

I went to the Healthy Nation conference in London last Wednesday where the Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell MP, Chair of the House of Commons Health Select Committee was interviewed by Victoria Macdonald, Health and Social Care correspondent, Channel 4 News

He said that demands on the UK NHS have been rising at a rate of 4% a year since 1965 but the budget for health had increased at a rate of only 3% a year over the same period and it can’t be raised any more. To make the challenge even harder, our Chancellor of the Exchequer (George Osborne) has announced plans to save £20 billion in the NHS by 2014

I have done some sums and worked out the following:

At the time of the invention of our NHS, the average school leaving age was 15, people worked until 65 and died shortly after. So they were productive and paying taxes for about 50 years. On the flip side they were non-productive and somewhat of a burden to the state (in education or healthcare or state pension) for just 15 years.

Now with half the kids these days being encouraged to attend university, the average school leaving age is around about 19 years old; if they work until 65, they will have put in just 46 years work, but not die until nearer 80. So they will be non-productive and somewhat of a burden to the state (in education or healthcare or state pension) for 34 years!

This lifespan to workspan ratio is unsustainable

And that is not all

The demographic time bomb means that we have less and less working people to pay taxes for more and more creaky and confused (dementia / Alzheimer’s) old folk.

What the NHS needs is a non-recurring, low cost, home treatment that reduces pain & cognitive disability and increases productive lifespan

Can you think of anything that might do that ?

Home use LLLT is a fixed one-off cost therapy that should last for at least a decade per device. Produced in high volumes these could cost just hundreds of dollars each. They are significantly more effective than NSAIDs, less toxic and costs less money.

What would it take for a government somewhere in the world to insist that LLLT is used as a routine therapy in medicine?

Much more on the demographic time bomb topic written here