Succeeding Against the Odds Can Make You Sick(nytimes.com) |
Succeeding Against the Odds Can Make You Sick(nytimes.com) |
I wonder how much of it actually boils down to chronically high cortisol levels. People that perceive stress as harmfull are more prone to its damage and we know that positive thoughts and meditation can negate that effect to some degree or even produce benefits.
Knowing that effect exists is one thing, but how do we protect ourselves ?
In chronic making of cortisol adrenal gland becomes deficient in Vitamin C which is used in the process [1]. This has direct effect on immunity (all animals produce more vitmin C in stresfull times to protect from it). Chronic insufficiency will not lead to scurvy (you only need tiny amount of C to prevent that) but will produce ill health particularly combined with smoking and bad eating habits which is typical for lower socioeconomic class (talking about it, blacks, the most affected, are regularly deficient in vitamin D too, another potent immunity booster).
The effect is multifactorial from that point - for example Vitamin C insufficiency changes cholesterol transformation to bile acids which leads to high cholesterol levels [2] which can provide some explanation for cardiovascular events.
Insufficiency is the level that will not result in terminal disease but in suboptimal health and shorter lifespan (i.e. RDA sux) because body will start to utilize triage [3].
Hence, I suggest everybody to forget about 60mg bullshit and use couple of grams of Vitamin C as few daily doses to protect from John Henryism effect. Afterall, that is what our closest relatives who have the same disfunctinal GULO gene - primates - do: they eat grams of C in the wild.
[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/145.long
I'm not sure the causation goes in that direction. Couldn't it also be that those who take damage from stress feel that stress is bad for them, and those who aren't affected by stress negatively feel that it's good for them? To throw a silly example... Vampires believe that sun is harmful, humans believe a bit of sun is good for them. But believing won't make a difference for the vampire.
Some people may deal with stress (as Sapolsky describes), so the effects of cortisol are not pronounced.
Those that cannot deal with the stressors, are those most affected and they are those that will admit they are stressed.
It is an issue of people tending to admit something, in a qualitative study.
1) People who say they don't stress 2) People who say they stress but don't believe it's harmful 3) People who say they stress and believe it's harmful
I find the (3) group is the one actually stressing, feeling all the anxiety etc.
The (2) group just talks about feeling stressed, but they just mean that they had lots of responsibilities etc, they didn't suffer actual stress (the mental issues associated with it) like the (3) group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L-gulonolactone_oxidase#Animal...
> There were number of successful attempts to activate lost enzymatic function in different animal species
This is not trival change however given the amount of time that passed and that some level of adaptation to loss ocured. It would however probably be milestone in human achievements.
Even if GULO is activated it might not be enough: The process of evolution does not necessarily result in the normal provision of optimum molecular concentrations:
http://www.cellmedsoc.org/research_archive/NHC/studien_pdf/o...
Found a paper on primate micronutrient patterns too:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1095643303...
Anyway, there is no such thing as 'natural vitamin C'. Its just vitamin C. I take several grams of ascorbic acid (AA) powder either pure or mixed with sodium bicarbonate (natrium ascorbate). AA is the same thing that my liver would produce if GULO gene wasn't disfunctional, something that back in time maybe made sense in evolutional context but now most certainly doesn't as context changed dramatically.
What people actually descibe unknowingly when talking about 'natural vitamin C' is plant based molecular complex of myriad of substances (form of low dose multivitamin) and that is entirelly different topic.
Sounds plausible.
> The focus on black adolescents is significant. In much of this research, white Americans appeared somehow to be immune to the negative health effects that accompany relentless striving. As Dr. Brody put it when telling me about the Pittsburgh study, “We found this for black persons from disadvantaged backgrounds, but not white persons.”
they are using a person's ability to get a cold (by having it basically sprayed in their face) as their operational definition of health.
to me this is extremely flawed. not only does past exposure play a huge role, so does DNA, let alone other behavioral habits that may separate the groups beyond just 'the system is against them'.
i dont know anything about who was selected in the Pittsburgh study, but being from that area I know there is huge opportunity for ethnic selection bias even within the 'white' group.
"The term was first used by Gary Saretsky (1972) to describe the behavior of John Henry, a legendary American steel driver in the 1870s who, when he heard his output was being compared with that of a steam drill, worked so hard to outperform the machine he died in the process"
Is reality that people who succeed against the odds are more likely to get sick, or that people who get sick frequently are more likely to fight against the odds?
Poverty in youth, is a predictor of future poor health outcomes. This is the conclusion of so many Dunedin study papers. [0] An unexpected finding, the effects of poverty are ^not^ reversed by future wealth. I can't find the specific study for this, however another report displays another unexpected find, "The high-need/high-cost group of adults could be identified as young as age 3years on the basis of their ‘brain health,’". [1]
While poverty is the root cause, race determines poverty, the health outcomes are lifelong.
Reference
[0] http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications
[1] http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/news-and-events/article/53
And somehow they manage to tie it back to Trump
This is garbage. What actually is the source of all this unneeded suffering is when people choose to believe the all-pervasive Western media, movie, and music refrain that success is measured by material wealth and prosperity. The Protestant work ethic has nothing to do with an ego-fueled, greedy striving for material wealth at all costs.
The Protestant work ethic is centered on the notion that work is a holy vocation, ordained by God. This belief stems back to when God placed man in the garden of Eden to work the garden (Genesis 2:15). The Protestant work ethic is working simply for the sake of enjoying the gift of labor, which was deemed very good at the beginning. Further, the Protestant work ethic also makes room for a Sabbath day of rest, something often foreign to American successaholics.
Lastly, both Jesus (Mark 4:18-20) and Paul (1 Timothy 6:8-10) and Solomon (Proverbs 23:4) make it abundantly clear the sacrifices involved with worshiping wealth and material prosperity (i.e. the standard-issue "American Dream")
In your view, how granular is that? That is - if someone is half Italian and half Swedish - are they monoracial?
The sociological explanation of this phenomenon is almost a hundred years old. You can read it here: Merton, Robert K. (October 1938). "Social Structure and Anomie". American Sociological Review. 3 (5): 672–682.
Sorry for the paywall, but you "hackers" know how to circumvent it, right?
".. characterized by a rapid change of the standards or values of societies (often erroneously referred to as normlessness), and an associated feeling of alienation and purposelessness. He believed that anomie is common when the surrounding society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for better or for worse and, more generally, when there is a significant discrepancy between the ideological theories and values commonly professed and what was actually achievable in everyday life."
This can certainly be said to describe how many are feeling with the current election outcome. Thanks for bringing this up.
And generally speaking successful politicians live long. Castro, Mugabe... And they did had a lot of adversaries. And won against the odds.
https://newsandfroyo.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/why-the-draft-...
(Ignore the article, I just picked it because they've already collected before & after photos of each of the last 4 presidents.)
The Protestant work ethic emerged from the Calvinist doctrine of predestination (who is saved and damned is decided by God in advance) and the belief that accumulating material wealth was a sign of having been chosen by God for salvation.
> when people choose to believe the all-pervasive Western media, movie, and music refrain that success is measured by material wealth
And yet the US is one of the least materialistic countries in the developed world:
https://www.ipsos-na.com/news-polls/pressrelease.aspx?id=635...
Further, real Christians (who live by the God given principles of honest hard work as you describe it above) are few and far between.
God blesses the chosen with wealth, therefore you work hard to have wealth (because you want to be a chosen one).
Max Weber, right?
First, except for Obama, the first picture is a nicely choreographed headshot (make up?) and the second is a candid photo with no attempt to make the person look good.
Second, except for Bush'88, all of those Presidents were in office for 8 years. I don't know about you, but I'm not surprised a person in their later years looks older almost a decade later.
My Mom was never President, but she looks much older when she was 60 vs. 52.
Stress has unique biochemical pattern that can be measured.
By the power of thinking. That is, by considering the provided data, and coming up with what looks to be more plausible.
Sure, it might be wrong.
But without that ability, even the best data are useless, because data are nothing without the interpretation part.
>Stress has unique biochemical pattern that can be measured.
That's irrelevant, though, in this case, because they didn't measure those. As the grandparent quotes: "They started asking people, “how much stress have you experienced in the last year?" -- so it's based on self-reporting.
This doesn't disprove that white people don't also have worse health outcomes with increased stress, but the focus for many researchers is in targeting health disparities and social inequalities. It just so happens that race plays a big role in that.
You'd probably also be interested in "The short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace", a young man who went from inner city poverty, to a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale university, to being killed in a drug robbery.
Suppose he aged 20% faster for 2 or 10 years that's simply not a big deal. However aging 20% faster for 50 years is.
One could argue that a black American would have great difficulty taking advantage of these stress reliefs.
In that spirit, I think you're wrong about inherited wealth, gold, and women who "let you do it" being unavailable to black Americans.
A small number of people of both races have access to these things.
For example, cocaine and alcohol addiction are associated with robust alterations in sleep architecture, including disturbances in slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement (REM), which has implications for several age-related diseases, since sleep contributes to the homeostatic regulation of the neuroendocrine and immune systems.
src: http://dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/images/resources/pdf/researc...
I called it a partisan attack because, prompted by the mere mention of Trump's name, that comment pulled the conversation so far off topic for no reason other than to attack Trump.
However, it's pretty disingenuous to suggest that everyone starts out in the same position on that ladder.
Here's a simple thought experiment for you. If you took the starting rating, x, for a set of Americans, I think you'd find that whites have a higher initial starting rank than someone who's black or Hispanic. It's harder to climb the ladder when you start out on a lower position.
Obama's daughters start out well ahead of a homeless white boy, for example, and any bias that would lead to aiding Obama's daughters instead of the homeless white boy is unjust.