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April 24, 2007Chronic Family Turmoil and Other Problems Cause Physical Changes |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: Adolescents who are chronically exposed to family turmoil, violence, noise, poor housing or other chronic risk factors show more stress-induced physiological strain on their organs and tissues than other young people. However, when they have responsive, supportive mothers, they do not experience these negative physiological changes, reports a new study from Cornell. But the research group also found that the cardiovascular systems of youths who are exposed to chronic and multiple risk factors are compromised, regardless of their mothers' responsiveness. Evans said that the findings suggest that the physiological toll of coping with multiple risk factors is significantly greater than with that of coping with a single event, even if that event was rather severe. "Moreover the burden appears to register in physiological systems that help us regulate our responses to stress," said Evans, the Elizabeth Lee Vincent Professor of Human Ecology and professor of human development and of design and environmental analysis in Cornell's College of Human Ecology. To study stress-induced physiological changes in young teens, the researchers -- including three students who were undergraduates at the time and a graduate student -- used an index called allostatic load. The new data, Evans said, may therefore explain, at least in part, "why income and racial inequalities are so pervasive and persistent in our society. Low-income kids and especially low-income kids who are nonwhite bear a disproportionate burden of cumulative risk exposure." The researchers also found that when stressed by a mental arithmetic problem, the cardiovascular systems of adolescents who had been exposed to chronic risk factors responded less actively to the stressor and were slower to physiologically recover.
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