Unnatural Causes: In Sickness and in Wealth

In Sickness and in Wealth was an eye-opening video. It pointed out how illness can often be derived from socio-economic class, specifically surrounding stress levels of individuals.  When an individual is constantly stressed for weeks, months, and even years, it causes for increased heart diseases, heart attacks, accelerating aging and ultimately death.

Psychologist, Sheldon Cohen wanted to examine the way stress effects our immune system. He stated that "It turns out the more education you have, the less cortisol you release during the day.  The more income you have, the less cortisol you release during the day".  Cortisol is in fact good for your body in small doses.  Long term effects can have detrimental effects.  Research indicated that individuals with less chronic stress caught less colds then people with more chronic stress.  Those individuals with successful careers have a co-workers to help facilitate job tasks, which cause for less stress as well. Individuals with less stress live healthier lifestyles.  These are people are ones who typically have a higher education and have more financial security.

Think about making healthy choice when it comes to eating a meal and exercising: think about the time it takes to prepare the meal, the transportation necessary to get to the store, think about the money we need to afford it, the cost of a gym membership.  When you have a higher income, you have a greater opportunity to make healthy life-style choices.

When it comes to growing up, Childhood poverty can have life long health consequences. According the Pediatrician, John P Schonkoff, at Harvard Medical Center "just the burden of day after day not knowing whether there is going to be food on the table or not knowing whether you're going to have a roof over your head, is actually toxic to the brain and the reason for that is because when the stress hormone levels go up, and if it stays up for days and weeks on end, those hormone levels literally interfere with the development of the brain circuity, they interfere with the development of the connections in the brain.  So we begin to see in children who experience toxic stress, long term impacts of whats basically chemically damaging to their brain".  This demonstrates how socio-economic levels have long term effects on the mental health and physicality of the human body. Unfortunately when it comes to children, they do not have much control over there circumstances.  It appears that this is an ongoing problem across our nation in impoverished communities.

"Part of good public health, is empowering communities". - Dr. Adewale Troutman: Director of Louisville Public health and wellness. Other researchers mention creating a a just society as a whole, which goes back to our first class, where we talked about social issues and how they involve communities and large groups of people.  It appears that problems effect large groups of people but we as a community can take steps on a united front to begin to address and solve them.

Check out Ted Talks: Mental health & Poverty and more information about obesity in the United States Waist Size and Socioeconomic Status.

Adelman, L. (Director). (2008). In Sickness and in Wealth [Video file]. California Newsreel. Retrieved May 21, 2018, from Kanopy.