Your Current Societal Status and Environment Affects Your Health

4 months ago

Our society is part of us just as we are part of it, one cannot be separated from the other and our society has effects on us but how does it affect our health? This conditions are referred to as Social determinants and they are societal conditions that can influence our health.

You might wonder how societal conditions can affect our health but the answer is that factors like income, housing, education, and work type can affect us biologically. This happens because we need things from our environment which serves as resources for our body. When I say this, do not let your mind be focused on only the microbes in the environment that becomes the microbial floral of the body, rather other things like outing, seeing a movie, and going shopping can also affect us on a biological level as it does prevents us from getting bored and as such preventing depression.

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Asides this, being knowledgeable about our health has also placed us at a higher chance of having good health as we are able to understand the basics of health such as symptoms, drug identification, where to get the drug, basic medical information and how to harness health services. These things are enough to affect our health and we are attended to in case of an emergency.

Our income, occupation and daily schedule affects our lives and people who do not have control of the mentioned things are likely to engage in activities that would affect their health such as they are unable to exercise regularly, smoke, and as such have high blood pressure and continuing this lifestyle can lead to more negative health effects in the body.

You might not agree with me that our environment and activities affect our health but an example of how what we do affects our health is one that is related to stress. Have you noticed that when you begin to worry over a particular thing either a failed exam, being anxious over a speech to be given you feel headache and cold but when this stress continues for a long time, it can become detrimental to our health as stress has been associated with aging meaning that it makes our body age faster than normal. Stress has its own good such as in the case of fight or flight, or our immune system combating diseases but when stress becomes chronic, it is at this time that our health is affected.

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It isn't work alone that stresses us out. I read that even marginalization and discrimination can lead to stress which is unhealthy to us. According to a study in the 1900s by Dr. Arlin Geronimus, an hypothesis was raised which stated that fertility in white women was within their 20s and 30s but this wasn't the same with black females who were more fertile, having a more healthy pregnancy with lower rate of infant death was in their teenage years and the hypothesis blamed it on the stressful social economic and environmental factors associated with racism leading to stress that caused their body to age quickly.

When we are stressed, there is an increase in our heart rate and release of cortisol, the stress hormone. This happens to us a lot of time as a result of stress but when it happens often they begin to leave behind makers that can be measured such as hormone pattern change, and increased cholesterol level. Sincerely, I think stress is an adult thing and we really stress ourselves a lot of things that we do not have control over just because we want to always find solutions to everything.