Saturday, May 09, 2015

we knew it caused visceral pain, now we know it causes genetic damage...,


HuffPo |  The urban poor in the United States are experiencing accelerated aging at the cellular level, and chronic stress linked both to income level and racial-ethnic identity is driving this physiological deterioration.

These are among the findings published this week by a group of prominent biologists and social researchers, including a Nobel laureate. Dr. Arline Geronimus, a visiting scholar at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study and the lead author of the study, described it as the most rigorous research of its kind examining how "structurally rooted social processes work through biological mechanisms to impact health."

What They Found
Researchers analyzed telomeres of poor and lower middle-class black, white, and Mexican residents of Detroit. Telomeres are tiny caps at the ends of DNA strands, akin to the plastic caps at the end of shoelaces, that protect cells from aging prematurely. Telomeres naturally shorten as people age. But various types of intense chronic stress are believed to cause telomeres to shorten, and short telomeres are associated with an array of serious ailments including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.
Evidence increasingly points to telomere length being highly predictive of healthy life expectancy. Put simply, "the shorter your telomeres, the greater your chance of dying."

The new study 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," Geronimus said in an interview with The Huffington Post.

5 comments:

BigDonOne said...

That study has it reversed. The same DNA that causes low intelligence and low FTO (hardwired at conception and causes reduced earning capacity - poverty) is the same DNA that causes telomeres to shorten down the road.....

CNu said...

lol, and you know this because your genetic science game hella skrong, or, because the little voices in your head told you so?

BigDonOne said...

No, no, no. It's the same principle where you frequently see liberal lefties claiming children growing up in poverty do poorly in school because of growing up in poverty. When the Real_Reason is those children inherited the genes for Dumb from their dumb parents who naturally were unable to earn more money because they were too genetically dumb to do well in the labor market, the basic cause of poverty. The folks who did the telomere length study did not do enough research to tell if it was one way or the other. Likely they just conveniently drew the Politically Correct conclusion that kept their funding sources happy even though BD's logic makes more sense......

CNu said...

lol, little voices in the cone...,

Dale Asberry said...

They have done similar studies. Even better, they did them with identical twins. Use your hella skrong science game to goog-all the results. Definitely won't quiet the little voices in the cone...

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