Not just that but “stress” in biochemistry/biomedicine could fill entire semesters full of lectures. On a hormonal, neurological, cellular level - stress is freaking fascinating.
Can you explain the tweet for me? First of all it implies that being poor or minority generates more stress than being rich or part of the majority, but then what about the molecular level?
As an example, being under this kind of chronic stress will very likely raise your cortisol levels, along with other hormones and neurotransmitters. Cortisol is great in the short term, but long term it suppresses the immune system, which means people are more susceptible to infection and diseases. It might even cause cancer defense to go down and make patients more likely to have worse treatment outcomes and be more likely to die from cancer (iirc from a lecture each day on average your body develops 6 new cancer cells. That means each day your body manages to identify and kill 6 cells that, if they don’t get detected, would cause cancer. You gotta have a good immune system to catch those cells. But please don’t quote me on that number, it was a random thing the prof said.)
Other reasons why being poor or a minority would lead to being sick are ofc food (cheap food is low in quality, for example it is usually low in fiber, which has been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer or diverticulitis - and, obviously, obesity, diabetes, cholesterol and therelike). Being a minority also means that medication that works well for white males will work differently and therefore possibly worse on you. Most clinical studies in the past have been done on white males, and they have a different expression and/or different “versions” of certain enzymes that activate/deactivate drug compounds. (This problem also hits women who are often avoided in studies because of risk of pregnancy.)
Not just that but “stress” in biochemistry/biomedicine could fill entire semesters full of lectures. On a hormonal, neurological, cellular level - stress is freaking fascinating.
Can you explain the tweet for me? First of all it implies that being poor or minority generates more stress than being rich or part of the majority, but then what about the molecular level?
As an example, being under this kind of chronic stress will very likely raise your cortisol levels, along with other hormones and neurotransmitters. Cortisol is great in the short term, but long term it suppresses the immune system, which means people are more susceptible to infection and diseases. It might even cause cancer defense to go down and make patients more likely to have worse treatment outcomes and be more likely to die from cancer (iirc from a lecture each day on average your body develops 6 new cancer cells. That means each day your body manages to identify and kill 6 cells that, if they don’t get detected, would cause cancer. You gotta have a good immune system to catch those cells. But please don’t quote me on that number, it was a random thing the prof said.)
Other reasons why being poor or a minority would lead to being sick are ofc food (cheap food is low in quality, for example it is usually low in fiber, which has been shown to reduce the risk of colon cancer or diverticulitis - and, obviously, obesity, diabetes, cholesterol and therelike). Being a minority also means that medication that works well for white males will work differently and therefore possibly worse on you. Most clinical studies in the past have been done on white males, and they have a different expression and/or different “versions” of certain enzymes that activate/deactivate drug compounds. (This problem also hits women who are often avoided in studies because of risk of pregnancy.)
Thanks!