Abstract
The biomedical model investigates diseases of the organism at the cellular level, and ignores the broader socioeconomic factors that affect health. This discursive analysis examines the physiological mechanism by which socioeconomic factors get inside the human body and make people susceptible to diseases. A survey of recent materials was carried out using PubMed database to identify peer-reviewed manuscripts that examine physiological reaction to stress and its connection to diseases. These studies reveal a complex relationship between socioeconomic status and chronic diseases.
Highlights
During the last three decades, researchers have been able to establish the physiological connection between socioeconomic status and diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart diseases, stroke, type II diabetes, memory impairment, and malignancies, which seem to increase as we go down the socioeconomic ladder of a society
While the social gradient may explain the continuous distribution of risks and vulnerabilities, the fundamental question that these researchers have been trying to answer was how does socioeconomic status get inside our bodies and make us susceptible to diseases? This discursive analysis, based on the current literature, explains the physiological mechanism through which socioeconomic status manifests as a major cause of disease, and makes some policy recommendations to mitigate the socioeconomic challenges, and their health damaging consequences
The stress induced disease, or allostatic load, is the chronic wear and tear on the body resulting from adaptation to stressor
Summary
During the last three decades, researchers have been able to establish the physiological connection between socioeconomic status and diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart diseases, stroke, type II diabetes, memory impairment, and malignancies, which seem to increase as we go down the socioeconomic ladder of a society. While the social gradient may explain the continuous distribution of risks and vulnerabilities, the fundamental question that these researchers have been trying to answer was how does socioeconomic status get inside our bodies and make us susceptible to diseases? This discursive analysis, based on the current literature, explains the physiological mechanism through which socioeconomic status manifests as a major cause of disease, and makes some policy recommendations to mitigate the socioeconomic challenges, and their health damaging consequences While the social gradient may explain the continuous distribution of risks and vulnerabilities, the fundamental question that these researchers have been trying to answer was how does socioeconomic status get inside our bodies and make us susceptible to diseases? This discursive analysis, based on the current literature, explains the physiological mechanism through which socioeconomic status manifests as a major cause of disease, and makes some policy recommendations to mitigate the socioeconomic challenges, and their health damaging consequences
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