On the theme of separate realities and the power of our minds, I would like to explore how our social relationships affect our biology, and thus our well-being. It is common knowledge that living life with high levels of stress, especially chronic stress, is linked to disease. What is not commonly known is that our social relationships, even those with people that we do not know, have direct affects on our health.
There is a growing body of evidence that is challenging the concept that genetics equates into biology. The body that you have and the level of well-being that you experience are products of much more than simply your genetic code. If one reads books like "The Bell Curve" and listens to the pharmaceutical industry, one could be lead to believe that much of one's fate is predetermined before birth. This is not true!
New research into racial health disparities is revealing how dynamic our bodies and states of well-being truly are. Through the integration of anthropological research and relatively new fields such as genomics, a perspective that views our biology and sociocultural world as being interrelated, is taking form. This new perspective challenges many levels of our society, but primarily materialism and social inequality. The belief that we are primarily material beings that are born with either good genes or bad ones, is about half true. Our society that is hooked on the material world wants to believe that our problems can be solved by technology, by taking a pill. This premiss that supports the pop-a-pill culture, would be even more convenient if it were only true. The scary truth behind this new perspective is that we are a lot more responsible for our health and well-being than many of us want to a realize! This potentially self-empowering reality is scary to many, but hopeful to those that have the courage to live a self-responsible and truly accountable lifestyle.
Our black president Barack Obama, represent a country that has come along way on the issue of race. However, the ongoing racial health disparities of our society, tells a very different story. This new research that I am referring to, sheds light on how the chronic stress of racism is linked to the lower levels of well-being and general health statistics of our minorities. There is still a very strong presence of what is referred to as - institutional racism - within our society. These racial health disparities are a sign of a struggling and ill social structure, but at the same time they are evidence of the cure to many of our diseases. The cure to many of these common disease (e.g., cardiovascular disease, diabetes, low birth weights, stroke, some cancers, etc...) lies within how we treat each other. The main problem with this simple cure to these disease is - compassion, empathy, and respect can not be trade marked and sold within this free market society.
Have you ever been in a close relationship that felt toxic? Well, dysfunctional or disrespectful relationships are toxic, literally! Whether these dis-eased relationships are on the personal or the societal level they are not serving our state of well-being very well.
The below address is one example of the type of research that I am using. I have added a "links" option where you can find a direct link to this research paper. If you are interested in this type of cutting edge research I can supply more references.
http://www.rslocum.com/Gravelee%20how%20race%20becomes%20biology.pdf
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