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Nico Pitney reports that the urban poor in the United States are experiencing accelerated aging at the cellular level, and that chronic stress linked both to income level and racial-ethnic identity is driving this physiological deterioration. Researchers analyzed telomeres, tiny caps at the ends of DNA strands that protect cells from aging prematurely, of poor and lower middle-class black, white, and Mexican residents of Detroit and found that low-income residents of Detroit, regardless of race, have significantly shorter telomeres than the national average. "There are effects of living in high-poverty, racially segregated neighborhoods -- the life experiences people have, the physical exposures, a whole range of things -- that are just not good for your health," says Nobel laureate. Dr. Arline Geronimus, the lead author of the study, described as the most rigorous research of its kind examining how "structurally rooted social processes work through biological mechanisms to impact health." White Detroit residents who were lower-middle-class had the longest telomeres in the study. But the shortest telomeres belonged to poor whites. Black residents had about the same telomere lengths regardless of whether they were poor or lower-middle-class. And poor Mexicans actually had longer telomeres than Mexicans with higher incomes. Geronimus says these findings demonstrate the limitations of standard measures -- like race, income and education level -- typically used to examine health disparities. "We've relied on them too much to be the signifiers of everything that varies in the life experiences of difference racial or ethnic groups in different geographic locations and circumstances."
One co-author of this new study is Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn who helped to discover telomeres, an achievement that won her the Nobel Prize in physiology in 2009. Blackburn ticked off a list of studies in which people's experiences and perceptions directly correlated with their telomere lengths: whether people say they feel stressed or pessimistic; whether they feel racial discrimination towards others or feel discriminated against; whether they have experienced severely negative experiences in childhood, and so on. "These are all really adding up in this quantitative way," says Blackburn. "Once you get a quantitative relationship, then this is science, right?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2015, @05:20PM
I wonder how bad it is for folks in silicon valley or NYC? I feel the lifestyle for folks in SV is pretty bad. Long commutes, late working hours, high stress environments. I don't think these are issues only segregated to the poor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GungnirSniper on Monday May 11 2015, @06:16PM
Stronger stress is not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Or if you'll involuntarily skip it. Or be robbed or worse.
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(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 11 2015, @10:40PM
Stronger stress is not knowing where your next meal is coming from. Or if you'll involuntarily skip it. Or be robbed or worse.
Stress doesn't work that way. The body doesn't magically know that stress from one source is worse than stress from another. I won't go as far as to claim that a IT job is automatically more stressful than a low income job in a bad neighborhood of Detroit, that's implausible, but a number of those IT jobs are extremely stressful and would be comparable even though the pay is better.
I think though that actual physical injury/illness and deprivation have effects beyond just "stress" and ethnic whatever. For example, healing from injury or illness requires some amount of tissue regeneration which in turn requires a lot of cell division which would shorten telomeres in parts of the body. A bad illness might even cause increased cell division over the entire body. After all, how long are cells going to last when the body has fever or elevated levels of toxins in the bloodstream for long periods of time?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Monday May 11 2015, @11:13PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Tuesday May 12 2015, @12:14AM
I wonder if it is more a feeling of hopelessness than stress.
When one is hopeless, one gets the mindset its game-over. The body may be apt to follow.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday May 12 2015, @06:48AM
My thought was they're looking at this backwards. Maybe people whose telomeres are more "fragile" experience more stress, perhaps being a bit lacking in regenerative ability. If it were just stress, it should not have also separated out by race (poor whites having the shortest sticks).
I'm reminded that PTSD turns out to have a genetic component.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday May 11 2015, @06:26PM
A relative of mine, a crusty grey satellite engineer living and working in silicon valley, repeated all of your concerns during Mother's day brunch yesterday:
And he had this to say about satellite-building:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2015, @06:40PM
They could never build a cleanroom that kept the sand out.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 11 2015, @10:52PM
Say what you want about us Arabs but the Arabs come to this country poor, speaking English as a second language, they work and go to some of the best schools studying some of the most difficult subjects and graduate with some of the highest scores. Heck, most of us Arabs speak English better than many educated Americans and I know Arabs that are proficient in several languages. I have a relative that was a language professor at one of the best universities that taught several languages there. He was proficient in seven languages and fluent in an additional six. He also studied ancient documents and was a government translator and at 60 years old when he began having heart problems the government put him at the top of the heart transplant list to get a heart transplant because ... Americans are notoriously monolingual and where the heck are you going to get someone that speaks so many languages so well in America, especially someone who works with/for the government. All the Arabs in my circles came here poor and are mostly now college educated and very successful. They unanimously find our educational system very easy compared to their own where the teacher would ask a question and if you didn't have the right answer the teacher would hit you with a ruler. Heck, one of my uncles had his tooth knocked out by a teacher and when my grandma complained the school sided with the teacher. That's why they find our educational system relatively easy, they had it hard. and they find opportunity here where in their own country all they see is oppression which is why they can't succeed there. The problem is their oppressive governments. They know what poverty and hardship is. That's why when they come here they do very well for themselves.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Monday May 11 2015, @07:05PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 4, Insightful) by sjames on Monday May 11 2015, @08:49PM
And yet, push comes to shove, I'll bet none of them would accept an offer to trade places for a while.
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday May 12 2015, @01:35PM
Some would say "Hell yes, I'll take their stuff, it is owed to me!"
Some would say "Hell no, I don't need your oppressive handout!"
There are more options but I suspect it largely depends on what was drummed into their heads most recently and how they thing their peers would view them after the decision.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday May 12 2015, @03:06AM
maybe before that, I really have no way of knowing.
What's really disturbing is that I can have a seizure while driving a car. Imagine the entire universe sprang into being, as if G-d Almighty Himself said "Let there be light" and there you are, at the beginning of time, driving your car. It really was just like that.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]