For years, experts have explored the impact stress can have on the body. These explorations have manifested themselves into stress scales and books like “The Body Keeps Score,” however, a new study underlined a fact that Black communities have known for years: systematic racism and discrimination have notable impacts on Black people’s health.
In addition to systematic racism laying the groundwork for stereotypes and biases toward Black patients in healthcare, a new study published in JAMA Network Open revealed how discrimination can cause chronic stress and inflammation, which can shorten their lifespan. In other words, the daily weight of racism shows up in the body in measurable and sometimes deadly ways.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis drew their findings from the St. Louis Personality and Aging Network (SPAN) Study, a longitudinal project that has followed older adults for nearly two decades. The data allowed scientists to examine not just isolated moments of hardship, but the long arc of stress over a lifetime.
Graduate student Isaiah Spears, who led much of the work, said he “saw the stark difference between the rate in which our Black participants in the sample have been dying relative to the white participants,” WashU Magazine reports.
The study found that 25 percent of Black participants died compared with about 12 percent of White participants, revealing that Black participants were far more likely to die at younger ages. That mortality gap (49.3%) was explained by stress exposure and inflation, according to researchers.
“Over time, continued chronic exposure to stress leads to dysregulation and an earlier breakdown of some of the biological systems in the human body,” Spears explained, per the outlet.
To measure how stress embeds itself biologically, researchers examined two inflammation-related proteins, C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, found in participants’ blood. Epidemiologists say these biomarkers remain elevated when the body’s fight-or-flight response is repeatedly activated, making them powerful indicators of accumulated stress.
“It’s important to be empirically demonstrated,” said Ryan Bogdan, the study’s senior author and a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis told the Washington Post.
Blood samples from more than 1,500 Black and White adults were analyzed over a 17-year period. Through this, researchers found that long-term stress, including childhood adversity, trauma, discrimination, and economic hardship, was strongly linked to higher inflammation later in life, which in turn correlated with earlier death.
The findings support Arline T. Geronimus’ “weathering hypothesis,” a framework that explains how the constant effort to survive and strive in an unequal society accelerates biological aging among marginalized groups.
“The most-weathered have already died,” Geronimus said, noting that ages 35 to 60 represent “the hardest, most stressful period of life for marginalized groups,” per the Washington Post.
However, she notes the study’s limitations, explaining that while it captured major stressors and overt discrimination, it failed to account for quieter, everyday stress that Black people endure, like microaggressions, which many Black people experience daily.
“It’s not just about trauma or severe deprivation, but kind of everyday fists in the face,” she added. The study acknowledged this gap, suggesting the true toll of stress may be even greater than documented.
The context is critical. Black Americans continue to have among the shortest lifespans in the U.S., with a life expectancy of 74 years in 2023, according to federal data. Similarly, the Urban Institute notes that in 2022, non-Hispanic white people could expect to live nearly 5 years longer than non-Hispanic Black people.
While the research points to the need for policies that reduce explicit and structural discrimination, experts are clear that the solutions won’t be quick or easy.
“Addressing large-scale societal issues requires concerted efforts enacted over time,” Bogdan explained per WashU Magazine. “That needle can be extremely hard to move. Stress exposure will always be there, so we need to devote more efforts to understand the mechanisms through which stress contributes to adverse health outcomes so that factors could be targeted to minimize health risks among those exposed.”
Ultimately, Public health experts say the findings further dismantle the myth that racial health disparities are rooted in individual choices or a lack of resilience.
“Stress management class is not going to solve this problem,” explained Dr. Sprague Martinez, director of UConn Health Disparities Institute. “This is important evidence that continues to contribute to what we know about the fact that racism drives racial inequities.”
So while this study doesn’t reveal anything new to Black communities who have long shouted being “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” it does validate a lived experience and hopefully opens the doors for more studies on these topics.
