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We know that health outcomes often differ by race. The ‘weathering theory’ may help explain why this is so, at least in the US. Rocks, soil and minerals – the elements that make up the land we live on – have no protection from the weather. They are struck by lightning, flooded by rain and baked by the scorching sun. This natural process, which represents the gradual wearing away of our Earth’s surface, is called weathering.
Over the past two decades, and especially the last few years, public health researchers have been using the term in a different context: to describe a process that they say occurs in the bodies of black people that occurs in the bodies of whites. Grow up in American society. This theory is gaining ground – data from 2021 showed that deaths due to COVID-19 were 2.8 times higher among Black/African Americans than whites, and studies have linked it to the weather.
The term “weathering” was first used in a public health context by Arline Geronimus, now professor of health behavior and health education at the University of Michigan in the US. While facilitating research on teen mothers in the 1990s, she made an unexpected discovery: Babies born to black mothers in their 20s and 30s had more health complications than babies born to mothers in their teens. This was the opposite of what was seen in white women, who had better outcomes than black women if they gave birth in their 20s and 30s.
Geronimus concluded that the health of black women deteriorates more rapidly than that of their white counterparts due to the racism-induced stress they experience in their daily lives.
‘wear and tear’ on the body
Years of research appear to have lent credibility to his theory. Around the same time as Geronimus’s initial findings, researchers studying chronic stress introduced the concept of allostatic load, which refers to the ‘wear and tear’ in the body caused by stress.
A person’s allostatic load can be determined by measuring their levels of a series of different indicators: cortisol, dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA), epinephrine, norepinephrine, cholesterol, glycosylated hemoglobin, resting systolic and diastolic blood pressure, body mass index and Waist-hip ratio. , High allostatic load is linked to many health problems such as migraine and heart disease.
The higher a person’s score, the more likely it is to have a negative impact on their health. In a 2006 paper, Geronimus and his team set out to measure people’s allostatic load scores. They found that the differences in these scores between black and white and rich and poor participants began to increase in their early 20s and became largest between the ages of 35 and 64. Black participants had higher scores than white participants across the board.
What supported Geronimus’s theory was that these differences could not be linked to poverty: Black women, regardless of income status, tended to have higher scores than poor white men and women and poor black men. Was most likely.
‘Caps’ that indicate aging
In recent years, scientists have also begun measuring telomeres to better understand climate. Telomeres are the “caps” on the ends of our chromosomes that play an important role in the aging process. They protect our chromosomes during cell division, just as the plastic on the ends of a shoelace keeps them from unraveling.
The more our cells divide, the shorter the telomeres become. Once telomeres are exhausted, the cell division process ceases and they die. Once this happens, our tissues begin to age. That’s why the length of our telomeres is relevant to studying aging. The longer they live, the longer it will take for us to experience the harmful side effects of aging.
A 2014 Harvard study found that although young black adults in their 20s had telomere length longer than their white counterparts, 50–60 year olds had similar lengths, indicating that black adults are aging faster. Were happening. Among 80-year-olds, white participants had longer telomeres than black participants.
Weather patterns around the world?
Most of the research on climate so far has been conducted in the US, meaning it is difficult to generalize the theory to other countries around the world.
But Devon Payne-Sturgess, a professor at the Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, said it’s likely that climate change is worsening “anywhere where you have this social hierarchy where you have a group of people who are discriminated against.” , they are placed at the bottom of society, and more marginalized,” she said. “I’m afraid that’s the case almost everywhere.”
One thing that may prevent the concept of seasonality from being studied internationally may be the lack of data on race. In the US, health data accessed by researchers includes sections that reflect race. This is not the case in countries like Germany.
Although it took nearly three decades to catch on in the U.S. (Geronimus published a book that garnered widespread media attention in 2023), the concept of seasonality, with more research, has begun to explain race-based health disparities around the world. Can help.
From that information, conclusions can be drawn about how to improve health in minority groups. One study is already underway: A survey of Indigenous mothers in New Zealand found that those who said they had experienced an “ethnically motivated physical attack” had children with shorter telomeres than mothers who did not. Who had not reported such attack.
In contrast, mothers who had positive feelings about their culture gave birth to children with “significantly longer” telomeres, the paper said.
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