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Post by Megan Mikesell on Sept 14, 2016 18:03:04 GMT
I thought the cortisol experiments were very interesting. I knew that chronic stress had long term consequences to our health, but putting it in a public health perspective was new. They compared two monkeys who have lived the same amount of time, ate the same diet, but simply due to social subordination is developing atherosclerosis at in increasing rate. Now add in stresses that people in poverty face in addition to social status such as taking care of a family, making sure there is food on the table, avoiding violence in the neighborhood, etc. and imagine what their arteries look like. This is why health programs focused solely on changing a behavior will not work. People must have a certain level of control over their environment in which they live, which often those in poverty and lower class do not.
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Post by ghannaba on Sept 19, 2016 19:11:04 GMT
You highlight such an important point regarding a person's health. Behaviour does make a up big part of how we biologically develop, but our development is affected (unfortunately or fortunately) much by circumstances and environment. Cortisol is a stress hormone and it does produce significant physiological changes that in a chronic situation could be detrimental to the individual. But I would most certainly hypothesize that there are other hormones we have not even discovered or pinpointed that interact with our body in ways that may even more strongly argue for the cultural impact of health from our interactions with each other in society. For example, our understanding of type 2 diabetes in the last couple decades has SIGNIFICANTLY changed because we became aware of leptins and how those and other hormones impact how our body responds to sugar and insulin.
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Post by ghannaba on Sept 19, 2016 19:14:07 GMT
Most importantly that I drew from the film is how all those components in each of the anecdotal examples illustrate some of the important issues addressed in Dr. Michael Lu's 12-point life-course perspective paper that they published a little bit ago (just as you have pointed out Megan). The points have a strong ideal that I think could be broadly applicable to humanity.
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Post by Summre Blakely on Sept 28, 2016 3:28:05 GMT
I think something as complex as poverty in itself could be studied for centuries and we still wouldn't know all of the effects (mental, physical, etc.) that it can have on the people who have to deal with it everyday. As ghannaba points out, there are more than likely other hormones and biological molecules that are at play here as well. Learning about social determinants of health has taught me that nothing is as simple as I once thought it was. I think most of the biases that people face today could be counteracted with raising awareness about just how submersive the culture of poverty is and how many aspects of a person's life it can affect.
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