Sick of Poverty

Poverty is not the cause of poor health, but the daily stress and the emotional feeling of being poor leads up to bad health. The socioeconomic status (SES) is a social ranking based on income, housing conditions, occupation, and education. The United States SES, when put on a ladder, has a greater distance between the richer people at the top and the poorer people on the bottom. Some physicians think that the richer people are healthier then the poor people because of their wealth. Whitehall studies showed members of the British civil service with the higher powered executives with lower mortality rates from chronic heart disease than their staff members. Britain also has widespread health care so the SES did not matter. Type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis are more regular among the poor but medical checkups will not stop the poor from being affected by it. Poor people are more likely to smoke, drink, and live in a violent neighborhood because of their lifestyles. Wealth is not the cause of poor health but rather stress and the feeling of being poor. The human body has a well balanced heart rate, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and other levels because of homeostasis the internal balance. Stress disrupts homeostasis and can have an impact on the body depending on how long the stress lasts. If the stress is physical and short-term then processes like digestion, tissue repair, growth, and reproduction shut down while the immune system increases to destroy diseases. The brain has less sensitivity of pain and an increased attentiveness during that time. The circulatory system is effected by the blood vessels constricting and the heart beating faster. Sugar glucose, which stores energy, is released because of the physical challenge to homeostasis that the body needs quickly in case of emergency. Most of the stress that people have is from interactions with other people and other matter that they worry about for extended periods of time. When stress becomes extended the symptoms are an increase in the risk of receiving depression and weakened memory. Next there is a higher risk of infertility and miscarriage from the reproductive organs; then there is higher hormone levels and weaker immune response that slows the recovery of stress. Finally there is higher blood pressure and a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. A biomedical literature recognized that people are more susceptible for acquiring stress-sensitive diseases and triggering a stress response by: feeling like they have no control over their stressful situation, feeling that they do not know information about their stress and situation, they can not get rid of their stress, feel like their situation is getting worse, or they do not have any social support for their stress. The poor have burdens like working most of the day with more than one job which gives them no time for stress relieving activities. Nancy Adler from the University of California did a test to see where people saw themselves on a social ladder. People chose if they thought they were poor or wealthy by their emotions and their confidence level. Originally people that felt poor were not necessarily poor, but they ended up poor because of the stress in their lives that weakened their health. Not only is stress a cause of the poor becoming sick and people feeling poor, but when the wealthy people would not help out their community by sharing their income then the poor would have an increased chance of health risks. The poor would see their living environments next to the wealthy person’s environment making the poor have more stress to their lives. Communities that worked together and had an equally shared income ended up having better health. The United States has one of the greatest income inequalities because of the wealth not being spread evenly from the rich to the poor. The communities do not help each other out which adds to the lower life expectancy and the poor not able to get their needed health care.
I am not poor and have never experienced being poor so I am limited on my understanding about what poor people go through. I have experience stress but not in the way that it was lead to an illness. I did not know that stress over prolonged periods of time had a big impact on the body making parts of the body shut down. I knew people’s emotions had impact on them because if you think a certain way sometimes it leads to your actions like a sports team that thinks they will lose before their game and ends up losing. I also didn't think about how different communities and environments impacted our lifestyles.