We've all been told, again and again, about the damaging effects being overweight has on one's health. But how many of us realize that the gaining of weight around people's middles 'is not a cause, its an effect' ?
Research findings increasingly show that chronic stress IS literally POISON to Americans' health, causing strongly negative, lifetime damage to people's health. The black/white health gap? Lots of evidence suggests stress is one cause. (exposures to toxics are others)
Research makes it crystal clear that there isn't just "a connection" between chronic stress and health, chronic stress is a major cause of dozens of serious, costly diseases that suck trillions out of our economy.
One of them is obesity. (which scientists often call "adiposity") Obesity as well as other systemic changes to the body and brain, is caused by a feedback loop driven by the release of stress hormones - especially over time. This happens via many pathways, and the combined effects are beginning to be recognized as a cumulative phenomenon called allostatic load (or "allostasis").
These changes can make a huge difference in people's health, causing a cascade of damage that rapidly can lead to serious diseases like heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, gastrointestinal ulcers, cancer and reflux, dementia and many others.
With such a compelling body of evidence in front of us, can anybody come to any different conclusion than that current predatory healthcare and economic policies are destroying the health of in particular, working and poor Americans, killing millions before their time?
Why is it that when people get sick, they have health care worries piled on top of the natural ones. isn't, say worrying about getting better, enough?
Evidently, not here. US policy is often fine tuned so that if they get sick, there is little in the way of protection. Hourly workers (who not infrequently have no paid or unpaid sick time, often lose their jobs.)
Why is the US is the only one of 22 developed nations without paid sick leave, forcing millions of low paid, hourly workers to work when they are sick, or lose their jobs.
If that is not a recipe for extreme, unnecessary stress, what is? No wonder Americans are getting fatter. They are being put under more and more stress.
One example of this work is a paper by Mary Dallman and nine of her co-authors in in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences entitled "Chronic stress and obesity: A new view of "comfort food" "The effects of adrenal corticosteroids on subsequent adrenocorticotropin secretion are complex. Acutely (within hours), glucocorticoids (GCs) directly inhibit further activity in the hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal axis, but the chronic actions (across days) of these steroids on brain are directly excitatory. Chronically high concentrations of GCs act in three ways that are functionally congruent. (i) GCs increase the expression of corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) mRNA in the central nucleus of the amygdala, a critical node in the emotional brain. CRF enables recruitment of a chronic stress-response network. (ii) GCs increase the salience of pleasurable or compulsive activities (ingesting sucrose, fat, and drugs, or wheel-running). This motivates ingestion of "comfort food." (iii) GCs act systemically to increase abdominal fat depots. This allows an increased signal of abdominal energy stores to inhibit catecholamines in the brainstem and CRF expression in hypothalamic neurons regulating adrenocorticotropin. Chronic stress, together with high GC concentrations, usually decreases body weight gain in rats; by contrast, in stressed or depressed humans chronic stress induces either increased comfort food intake and body weight gain or decreased intake and body weight loss. Comfort food ingestion that produces abdominal obesity, decreases CRF mRNA in the hypothalamus of rats. Depressed people who overeat have decreased cerebrospinal CRF, catecholamine concentrations, and hypothalamo–pituitary–adrenal activity. We propose that people eat comfort food in an attempt to reduce the activity in the chronic stress-response network with its attendant anxiety. These mechanisms, determined in rats, may explain some of the epidemic of obesity occurring in our society."
its just one of many.. A 2006 review, entitled "Physiology and Neurobiology of Stress and Adaptation: Central Role of the Brain" summarizes a great many findings over several decades. But there is much more.. including recent studies that show conclusively that chronic stress (or even chronic noise) destroys the ability to learn.
Could we start considering the human cost of the damage stress causes to Americans and the compelling economic, not just moral, case for reducing it in every way possible?