Mobilization of energy causes
Therefore, stress can promote plaque formation by increasing the odds of blood vessels being damaged and inflamed, and by increasing the likelihood that circulating crud (platelets, fat, cholesterol, and so on) sticks to those inflamed injury sites. For years, clinicians have tried to get a sense of someone’s risk of cardiovascular disease by measuring how much of one particular type of crud there is in the bloodstream. This is, of course, cholesterol, leading to such a skittishness about cholesterol that the egg industry has to urge us to give their cholesterol-filled products a break. High levels of cholesterol, particularly of “bad” cholesterol, certainly increase the risk for cardiovascular disease. But they’re not a great predictor; a surprising number of folks can tolerate high levels of bad cholesterol without cardiovascular consequences, and only about half of heart attack victims have elevated cholesterol levels. In the last few years, it is becoming clear that the amount of damaged, inflamed blood vessels is a better predictor of cardiovascular trouble than is the amount of circulating crud. This makes sense, in that you can eat eleventy eggs a day and have no worries in the atherosclerosis realm if there are no damaged vessels for crud to stick to; conversely, plaques can be forming even amid “healthy” levels of cholesterol, if there is enough vascular damage.
Link to original
- Blood vessel damage & inflammation (ultimate factor, good predictor)
- Can get diseased even with moderate cholesterol
- Cholesterols from body’s storage, plaque formation (proximate factor, bad predictor)
In general, the monkeys under the most social stress were most at risk for plaque formation. Kaplan showed that this can even occur with a low-fat diet, which makes sense, since, as will be described in the next chapter, a lot of the fat that forms plaques is being mobilized from stores in the body, rather than coming from the cheeseburger the monkey ate just before the tense conference.
Link to original- Normal people can be high
- Only half of diseased are high
Heart disease of lower status workers
- Less perceived control & status → stress
- More cortisol: higher blood pressure, faster heart rate, inflammation
- Psychological factors > strictly physiological factors like cholesterol
- Studies on 17000 British civil servants + a million Bell Company:
The status of a person’s job was more able to predict their likelihood of a heart attack than obesity, smoking or high blood pressure. Somebody in a low-grade job, such as a janitor, was nearly four times as likely to have a heart attack as a permanent secretary at the top of the heap. Indeed, even if the permanent secretary was fat, hypertensive or a smoker, he was still less likely to suffer a heart attack at a given age than a thin, non-smoking, low-blood-pressure janitor.
Link to original
Hormones in lower social status
Testosterone levels correlate with aggression, but is that because the hormone causes aggression, or because release of the hormone is caused by aggression? In our materialism, we find the first alternative far easier to believe. But in fact, as studies of baboons demonstrate, the second is closer to the truth. The psychological precedes the physical. The mind drives the body, which drives the genome.
Link to original
The higher your self-esteem and social rank relative to those around you, the higher your serotonin level is. Experiments with monkeys reveals that it is the social behaviour that comes first. Serotonin is richly present in dominant monkeys and much more dilute in the brains of subordinates. Cause or effect? Almost everybody assumed the chemical was at least partly the cause: it just stands to reason that the dominant behaviour results from the chemical, not vice versa. It turns out to be the reverse: serotonin levels respond to the monkey’s perception of its own position in the hierarchy, not vice versa.
Link to original