9 ms·

Succeeding Against the Odds Can Make You Sick

137 points by syadegari 10y ago

divbit 10y ago
TLDR (or at least what I took from it): Too much adversity produces stress that is bad for the body in that it ages your immune system much faster than it should. Sounds plausible.
- treyfitty 10y ago
  Important qualifier: (I only read up to the middle) the results were largely associated with African American subjects.
  - afterburner 10y ago
    Yes, they kept saying the negative effects didn't happen to whites, so I'm not sure what the takeaway here is. Life is harder for black people?
    - epmaybe 10y ago
      The idea is that the constant stress imparted to black people by institutional and systemic racism leads to poorer health outcomes. 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.
    - segmondy 10y ago
      Success is harder for black folks. If they don't leave the poorer areas they grew up in, did they really succeed? There's an increase risk of being a victim if you are richer than most in a poorer area. if they leave, they are socially isolated from their comfort zone and friends, labeled a sell out, have to conform to social norms of the new environment. In both cases friends and relatives constantly beg for money. The worry of losing it all is very real. Yes, life is harder for blacks in America. A black African that succeedes in Africa doesn't have as much stress.
      - travmatt 10y ago
        This has largely been my experience. 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.
    - divbit 10y ago
      I assumed, on reading, that they were suggesting it was due to some societal factors (e.g. racism) that makes it harder for black people, but maybe I misinterpreted it.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      Well, even as a poor white, fighting poverty etc, it's different than dodging bullets in your neighborhood (as was often the case, in the time of the study), plus, the dominant race of society seeing you as criminal/inferior/threatening.
  - xigency 10y ago
    Also found recently in a Finnish population (skimmed through the end.)
  - mcguire 10y ago
    If I understood the article correctly, the effect was originally associated with African Americans, but has recently been extended to others in similar "striving" conditions.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- venomsnake 10y ago
  Is there info about social status. Because Trump should be on his deathbed now and Obama must be already very very sick. And generally speaking successful politicians live long. Castro, Mugabe... And they did had a lot of adversaries. And won against the odds.
  - redmaverick 10y ago
    That was exactly what was going through my mind. Trump basically fought and won against the GOP establishment, the democrats, media and the pollsters and made it. He is still at war with the media and the world at large still hates him. He seems pretty unperturbed though.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Lot's of stress over a decade is not what this is studying. 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.
    - oculusthrift 10y ago
      it's the cocaine that makes him seem unperturbed
      - jjawssd 10y ago
        He would be dead by now if he did coke because coke accelerates cellular mechanisms for aging 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/researchmaterial/2016/IsbiologicalageingacceleratedindrugaddictionVolkowKlein2017.pdf http://dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/images/resources/pdf/researc...
        adventured 10y ago
- 131012 10y ago
  It is slightly more than adversity, as anyone can lose someone important or their job, suffer from brain trauma, etc. Upward mobility implies understanding and navigating through different sets of social rules and this can be extremely stressful and implies what sociologists call anomie. 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?
  - divbit 10y ago
    There is a also a wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie which is a term I hadn't heard before.
  - myowncrapulence 10y ago
    The wiki for Anomie is fascinating. ".. 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.
epmaybe 10y ago
When I was in a course on health disparities, we referred to this phenomenon as the "John Henry effect" "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"
Nomentatus 10y ago
Light. pRGCs. Remember that other research shows that conscientiousness clearly leads to longer life. So diligence turns out to be opposite to conscientiousness; I suspect because it leads to extended hours. If you blow your biological clock, your whole daily hormonal cycle goes with it.
kirse 10y ago
Dr. James expects John Henryism can now be seen across Western democracies, wherever people are inculcated with a Protestant sense of personal responsibility and belief in self-reliance. 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")
- j2bax 10y ago
  I strongly agree with everything you are saying here. But that said, I do think its prevailing thinking among protestants in the US; who are generally right leaning welfare hating lovers of Christ. Further, real Christians (who live by the God given principles of honest hard work as you describe it above) are few and far between.
- stupidcar 10y ago
  All work, no ethics.
- dstaten 10y ago
  This is more God/Bible than I think I've ever seen on HN
  - throwanem 10y ago
    One tends to hesitate.
- 10y ago
ysavir 10y ago
I wonder if they confused the cause for the symptom. 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?
automatwon 10y ago
The Trump administration could do much more to damage Americans’ health than just repeal the Affordable Care Act and leave people without access to hospitals and medications. And somehow they manage to tie it back to Trump
- FrancoDiaz 10y ago
  It's the NYT. They had to find a way.
  - refurb 10y ago
    You just don't know high-quality, unbiased journalism when you see it. /s
wolfspider 10y ago
Just for fun I'll go ahead and translate how this article reads in my mind- since thankfully I don't naively believe that I am of a singular race or ascribe my personality to some form of nationalism which has only existed for a little over 200 years (here is how we seriously talk in my house). Monoracials continuing to divide themselves into imaginary compartments have discovered that thinking too hard about a society of pro-inbreeding (we don't use the word 'racist' just 'pro-inbreeding') can cause auto-immune disorders. The antiquated pagan-but-not-pagan work ethic is what typifies the monoracial experience as most of their life is based on overt simplifications. Just for fun we will bring up the current political climate where most Americans have chosen a single race for the outgoing president and have applied it's meaning into somehow being contrary to the one born with a silver spoon in his mouth- who happens to be very pro-inbreeding. When we look at things like pure-bred dogs which are born with a gamut of mental problems and physical deficiencies- its easy for any group of monoracials to say 'That's how I want to be like a crazy pure-bred dog that's me!'. The 'Blacks' (the author doesn't specify here if black means African, West Indian, Hispanic, Moorish, etc..) as this expert points out are the only people worth mentioning because if you are not of a singular race (in your head of course no one is of a singular race) than you don't exist and nobody cares about your troubles.
- RangerScience 10y ago
  I like the term "monoracial". In your view, how granular is that? That is - if someone is half Italian and half Swedish - are they monoracial?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
dstaten 10y ago
"a dearth of yoga studios"
renlo 10y ago
Isn't it just that people who are 'more diligent and [tend] to strive for success' tax their bodies more by working harder? Whereas 'lazier' people tend to give their bodies more time to recuperate? Adversity isn't the cause; it's working to overcome adversity. Similarly, being rich doesn't make one healther; being rich gives one more access to healthcare and the means to take time off of work. I think the distinction is important.
- trustfundbaby 10y ago
  True, but this is the telling bit > 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.”
  - autokad 10y ago
    I am not convinced. 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.
  - sunstone 10y ago
    Following on the comment of majkinetor above it's not impossible that black youth are also much more deficient in Vitamin D on average. It could be a confounding factor.
fdsfsaa 10y ago
You know what also makes you sick? A lack of professional accomplishment, missing respect from your peers, and a general sense of purposelessness. It's easy to look at the costs of ambition and ignore its benefits.
- gicadin 10y ago
  The qualities you are listing affect your emotional health. The article focuses on the physical health of the body. One does affect the other but that's not the point of the article.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
majkinetor 10y ago
This thing is something people observed for a long time and its totally contextual - In "How to make stress your friend" TED talk, Kelly McGonigal showed that people who believe that stress is damaging will actually get it that way and vice versa. 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 http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/145.long [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4685043 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4685043 [3] http://www.bruceames.org/Triage.pdf http://www.bruceames.org/Triage.pdf
- chillacy 10y ago
  > ‘They started asking people, “how much stress have you experienced in the last year?”’ The doctors also probed whether participants believed that stress was bad for their health – and then looked at the records to see who died. ‘People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 per cent increased risk of dying. But,’ McGonigal continues, ‘that was ONLY true for the people who also believed stress was also harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die – in fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had very little stress.’ 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.
bootload 10y ago
"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." 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 http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications [1] http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/news-and-events/article/53 http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/news-and-events/article/53
phkahler 10y ago
I don't see anything new here. Stress is hard on people. Those who strive to succeed against the odds are subjecting themselves to higher stress levels. The article seems to be trying to imply a causation that is unfounded.

137 points by syadegari 10y ago

TLDR (or at least what I took from it): Too much adversity produces stress that is bad for the body in that it ages your immune system much faster than it should. Sounds plausible.

treyfitty 10y ago
Important qualifier: (I only read up to the middle) the results were largely associated with African American subjects.
- afterburner 10y ago
  Yes, they kept saying the negative effects didn't happen to whites, so I'm not sure what the takeaway here is. Life is harder for black people?
  - epmaybe 10y ago
    The idea is that the constant stress imparted to black people by institutional and systemic racism leads to poorer health outcomes. 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.
  - segmondy 10y ago
    Success is harder for black folks. If they don't leave the poorer areas they grew up in, did they really succeed? There's an increase risk of being a victim if you are richer than most in a poorer area. if they leave, they are socially isolated from their comfort zone and friends, labeled a sell out, have to conform to social norms of the new environment. In both cases friends and relatives constantly beg for money. The worry of losing it all is very real. Yes, life is harder for blacks in America. A black African that succeedes in Africa doesn't have as much stress.
    - travmatt 10y ago
      This has largely been my experience. 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.
  - divbit 10y ago
    I assumed, on reading, that they were suggesting it was due to some societal factors (e.g. racism) that makes it harder for black people, but maybe I misinterpreted it.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    Well, even as a poor white, fighting poverty etc, it's different than dodging bullets in your neighborhood (as was often the case, in the time of the study), plus, the dominant race of society seeing you as criminal/inferior/threatening.
- xigency 10y ago
  Also found recently in a Finnish population (skimmed through the end.)
- mcguire 10y ago
  If I understood the article correctly, the effect was originally associated with African Americans, but has recently been extended to others in similar "striving" conditions.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
venomsnake 10y ago
Is there info about social status. Because Trump should be on his deathbed now and Obama must be already very very sick. And generally speaking successful politicians live long. Castro, Mugabe... And they did had a lot of adversaries. And won against the odds.
- redmaverick 10y ago
  That was exactly what was going through my mind. Trump basically fought and won against the GOP establishment, the democrats, media and the pollsters and made it. He is still at war with the media and the world at large still hates him. He seems pretty unperturbed though.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Lot's of stress over a decade is not what this is studying. 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.
  - oculusthrift 10y ago
    it's the cocaine that makes him seem unperturbed
    - jjawssd 10y ago
      He would be dead by now if he did coke because coke accelerates cellular mechanisms for aging 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/researchmaterial/2016/IsbiologicalageingacceleratedindrugaddictionVolkowKlein2017.pdf http://dalgarnoinstitute.org.au/images/resources/pdf/researc...
      - adventured 10y ago
131012 10y ago
It is slightly more than adversity, as anyone can lose someone important or their job, suffer from brain trauma, etc. Upward mobility implies understanding and navigating through different sets of social rules and this can be extremely stressful and implies what sociologists call anomie. 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?
- divbit 10y ago
  There is a also a wikipedia article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie which is a term I hadn't heard before.
- myowncrapulence 10y ago
  The wiki for Anomie is fascinating. ".. 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.

epmaybe 10y ago

When I was in a course on health disparities, we referred to this phenomenon as the "John Henry effect" "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"

Nomentatus 10y ago

Light. pRGCs. Remember that other research shows that conscientiousness clearly leads to longer life. So diligence turns out to be opposite to conscientiousness; I suspect because it leads to extended hours. If you blow your biological clock, your whole daily hormonal cycle goes with it.

kirse 10y ago

Dr. James expects John Henryism can now be seen across Western democracies, wherever people are inculcated with a Protestant sense of personal responsibility and belief in self-reliance. 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")

j2bax 10y ago
I strongly agree with everything you are saying here. But that said, I do think its prevailing thinking among protestants in the US; who are generally right leaning welfare hating lovers of Christ. Further, real Christians (who live by the God given principles of honest hard work as you describe it above) are few and far between.
stupidcar 10y ago
All work, no ethics.
dstaten 10y ago
This is more God/Bible than I think I've ever seen on HN
- throwanem 10y ago
  One tends to hesitate.
10y ago

ysavir 10y ago

I wonder if they confused the cause for the symptom. 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?

automatwon 10y ago

The Trump administration could do much more to damage Americans’ health than just repeal the Affordable Care Act and leave people without access to hospitals and medications. And somehow they manage to tie it back to Trump

FrancoDiaz 10y ago
It's the NYT. They had to find a way.
- refurb 10y ago
  You just don't know high-quality, unbiased journalism when you see it. /s

wolfspider 10y ago

Just for fun I'll go ahead and translate how this article reads in my mind- since thankfully I don't naively believe that I am of a singular race or ascribe my personality to some form of nationalism which has only existed for a little over 200 years (here is how we seriously talk in my house). Monoracials continuing to divide themselves into imaginary compartments have discovered that thinking too hard about a society of pro-inbreeding (we don't use the word 'racist' just 'pro-inbreeding') can cause auto-immune disorders. The antiquated pagan-but-not-pagan work ethic is what typifies the monoracial experience as most of their life is based on overt simplifications. Just for fun we will bring up the current political climate where most Americans have chosen a single race for the outgoing president and have applied it's meaning into somehow being contrary to the one born with a silver spoon in his mouth- who happens to be very pro-inbreeding. When we look at things like pure-bred dogs which are born with a gamut of mental problems and physical deficiencies- its easy for any group of monoracials to say 'That's how I want to be like a crazy pure-bred dog that's me!'. The 'Blacks' (the author doesn't specify here if black means African, West Indian, Hispanic, Moorish, etc..) as this expert points out are the only people worth mentioning because if you are not of a singular race (in your head of course no one is of a singular race) than you don't exist and nobody cares about your troubles.

RangerScience 10y ago
I like the term "monoracial". In your view, how granular is that? That is - if someone is half Italian and half Swedish - are they monoracial?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

dstaten 10y ago

"a dearth of yoga studios"

renlo 10y ago

Isn't it just that people who are 'more diligent and [tend] to strive for success' tax their bodies more by working harder? Whereas 'lazier' people tend to give their bodies more time to recuperate? Adversity isn't the cause; it's working to overcome adversity. Similarly, being rich doesn't make one healther; being rich gives one more access to healthcare and the means to take time off of work. I think the distinction is important.

trustfundbaby 10y ago
True, but this is the telling bit > 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.”
- autokad 10y ago
  I am not convinced. 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.
- sunstone 10y ago
  Following on the comment of majkinetor above it's not impossible that black youth are also much more deficient in Vitamin D on average. It could be a confounding factor.

fdsfsaa 10y ago

You know what also makes you sick? A lack of professional accomplishment, missing respect from your peers, and a general sense of purposelessness. It's easy to look at the costs of ambition and ignore its benefits.

gicadin 10y ago
The qualities you are listing affect your emotional health. The article focuses on the physical health of the body. One does affect the other but that's not the point of the article.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

majkinetor 10y ago

This thing is something people observed for a long time and its totally contextual - In "How to make stress your friend" TED talk, Kelly McGonigal showed that people who believe that stress is damaging will actually get it that way and vice versa. 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 http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/145.long [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4685043 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4685043 [3] http://www.bruceames.org/Triage.pdf http://www.bruceames.org/Triage.pdf

chillacy 10y ago
> ‘They started asking people, “how much stress have you experienced in the last year?”’ The doctors also probed whether participants believed that stress was bad for their health – and then looked at the records to see who died. ‘People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 per cent increased risk of dying. But,’ McGonigal continues, ‘that was ONLY true for the people who also believed stress was also harmful for your health. People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die – in fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had very little stress.’ 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.

bootload 10y ago

"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." 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 http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications [1] http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/news-and-events/article/53 http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/news-and-events/article/53

phkahler 10y ago

I don't see anything new here. Stress is hard on people. Those who strive to succeed against the odds are subjecting themselves to higher stress levels. The article seems to be trying to imply a causation that is unfounded.