“Status stress” creates health problems for a life-time

Stress for Success

November 5, 2013, Week 440

It seems unfair that whom you’re born to influences your stress, hence your health, for your entire life. In general, the greater the family’s affluence and the lower the “status stress,” the better the lifetime health. Conversely, those born into poverty have a lifetime of poorer health.

The reason, according to much research, involves perception of control. The more helpless one feels - the less control one perceives - when facing stressors the more lethal those stressors’ effects. Perception of control typically declines the further down the socioeconomic ladder you go, with potentially severe consequences.

Perception of control influences all areas of life. If you grew up believing your responses to life’s challenges can influence your outcomes, you’ll likely look for and find plenty of options. Your “self-efficacy” will be higher, automatically reducing your stress and making you a healthier, better problem solver.

If you grew up in poverty, you may have learned “there’s nothing I can do” to make things better. The greater this belief the more you’ll suffer from “learned helplessness,” the most stressed personality of all. Learning to feel helpless means you won’t try the many options that are available to you to positively affect your life.

For example, as an infant a childhood friend was unfortunately adopted by a cruel family. She became morbidly obese during grade school over which her mother relentlessly berated her. Her father beat her regularly with no consistency as to why, leaving her unable to determine which behaviors to avoid to minimize the beatings. Throughout her life, she suffered significant learned helplessness. One example was when as an adult she wanted to buy a condo but didn’t approach the bank for a loan because she knew they wouldn’t give her one even though she had a high enough income.

Consider how the following research about learned helplessness and status stress affects the less fortunate of us:

·         Indiscriminate electric shocks given to animals sent them into a form of depression, dulling learning and memory. But, when the animal had control over the shocks’ duration, they remained resilient. Having control over the length of the pain was more important than the pain itself. This has important implications for:

o   A consequence of children growing up with low control is their brains get wired for learned helplessness, limiting their options, therefore their lives;

o   The racial differences in longevity: In the US, whites live on average five years longer than African-Americans. A 2012 study by a Princeton researcher computed that socioeconomic and demographic factors, not genetics, accounted for 70 – 80% of the difference. The single greatest contributor was income, accounting for more than half.

o   Subjective experiences of racism by African-Americans correlate with visceral fat accumulation in women, which increases the risk of metabolic syndrome, thus heart disease and diabetes. In men, they correlate with high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.

·         In primate experiments low status females are more likely to develop heart disease and greater inflammation compared with higher status females. When eating junk food, they more rapidly progress toward heart disease. High-ranking males heal faster than their lower-status males who are more likely to choose cocaine over food than higher-ranking males.

·         Rockefeller University neuroscientist, Bruce McEwen, says, “Poverty gets under the skin.” He refers to “biological embedding” of social status. Parental social status and early life stress wire your brain, increasing vulnerability to degenerative disease and infection decades later. Carnegie Melon scientists exposed volunteers to a common cold virus. Those who’d grown up poorer, measured by parental home ownership, resisted the virus less effectively and suffered more severe symptoms.

These findings raise important questions about the role of status stress and learned helplessness in hampering life successes. Martha Farah, University of PA neuroscientist, found differences in the capacity to learn. Socioeconomic status correlates with children’s ability to pay attention and ignore distractions. Other researchers have observed differences in the function of the prefrontal cortex, the brain region associated with planning and self-control, in poorer children.

Farah said, “… seeing an image of the brain with specific regions highlighted where financial disadvantage results in less growth reframes the problems of childhood poverty as a public health issue, not just an equal opportunity issue.”

In our polarized political climate there is unlikely to be any significant attempt to address these health differences and their causes, so they will continue to cost each and every one of us.

Jacquelyn Ferguson, M. S. is an international speaker and a Stress and Wellness Coach.  Order her book, Let Your Body Win: Stress Management Plain & Simple, at http://www.letyourbodywin.com/bookstore.html.  Email her to request she speak to your organization at jferg8@aol.com.