Prometheus 6   

Congratulations, Prometheus! Not only did you bring us fire, but you're on Digby's blogroll!

He's on mine too, so we're even. In fact, he's been on my blogroll damn near from the beginning, so he's still go a bit of an edge on me.

But who's counting, right? :-)

I'm almost finished with the article. I thought this passage was especially revealing:

It is well known that junk food can make anxious people feel better. Researchers from the University of California recently discovered one possible reason. In response to constant stress, the brain makes a hormone called corticotropin-releasing factor, which instructs the adrenal glands to manufacture stress hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. These hormones cause a range of physiological changes that over long periods can be harmful. When people with high levels of cortisol eat sugary, fatty foods, fat is deposited in the abdomen. The researchers theorize that these abdominal fat cells can temporarily inhibit the brain from making corticotropin-releasing factor, reducing feelings of stress and anxiety. If this theory is correct, it could explain how the stress of poverty creates a biological urge to overeat, thus putting poor people at greater risk of obesity and its consequences -- diabetes, heart disease, stroke and certain types of cancer. Perhaps this explained why Juanita found it easier to change her diet once she moved out of the stressful atmosphere of Nepperhan Avenue. She admitted that doctors had been telling her over the years that she should consume less fattening food. ''But they can tell you, and you don't do it,'' Juanita said.

Ahah! While we're on the subject, you are also on my list of "Weblogs of distinction."

Another quote (page 8):

After meeting Noemi, Raimunda and Juanita, I began to see more clearly what Arline Geronimus, the University of Michigan researcher, was talking about. Perhaps the miasma that is killing the poor really is stress after all. Then I spoke to the mothers of six children who had severe asthma. Every one of them had significantly fewer and less severe attacks after the families moved out of southwest Yonkers. Reduced stress could be partly responsible -- stress can worsen asthma -- but it seemed clear to me a cleaner environment was also responsible. The children ranged in age from 3 to 16; they all moved out of southwest Yonkers and settled in different parts of Westchester. The mothers, who asked that their last names not be used, saw astonishing changes, and hearing their stories convinced me that the only way to deal with the staggering epidemic of asthma that afflicts 30 percent of children in some New York City neighborhoods is to clean up the rundown, roach-infested buildings where so many of these children live.

That's why the whole article should be read. It's poverty, it's stress, it's environment, and people are funneled into those conditions by race and class.

Rich people who smoke X cigarettes get Y cases of lung cancer per 100, poor people who smoke X cigarettes get Y+Z cases of cancer per 100.

It's like when Edward Kennedy said in cCongress all those years ago that Americans use a staggeringly disproportionate fraction of the lanet's resources. We'd known that for years. By the time a Kennedy-like figure says it in public though, it's so obvious its undeniable. That's what's happening here. That's what this article represents.

thanks for this article. i had alawys attributed the poverty-poor health link to substandard medical care, an external social problem. i didn't realize that there might be physiological reasons for the link as well. the implications that this is also an internal problem should have wide ramifications on medical research, or one would hope.