Interesting piece from Doug Kihn in Truthout. Absolutely, stress has a lot to do with it. When I got a divorce, bam! Dropped the weight. Hooked up with bad boyfriend? Put it right back on. Now in state of chronic money worry? Losing weight, but at an absolute crawl. I can tell you that the more money I made, the less I weighed. Hmm.
As social fear and insecurity rise, mental health declines.
Apparently, so does physical health. According to a new study from Rice University and the University Colorado at Boulder in Social Science Quarterly, despite modest gains in lifespan over the past century, the United States still trails many of the world’s countries when it comes to life expectancy, and its poorest citizens live approximately five years less than more affluent people. The United States, which spends far more money on medical care than other advanced industrialized countries, has the sickest residents in every category of unwellness.
The result of all of this hysteria and whip-cracking on the backs of the American workforce is that we feel harried and harassed, with little reward to show for it. Mental health has been worsening for a long time in the United States, and this mental decline has been the culprit behind so many – probably the majority – of physical health problems as well. One of them, as we shall see later, is obesity.
Chinese medicine can help to make sense of most mental and physical problems in the United States and organize them into three main categories: those of chronic tension, excessive interior heat and excess weight. Together, they form a super-syndrome some would call the American Syndrome, since it seems to be a universal phenomenon.
Chronic tension is caused by worrying, and all its avatars – anxiety, fear, guilt, remorse, dread. Excessive interior heat results from the friction caused by it hurrying and worrying, while excess weight – which can manifest as obesity – is the result of habitual overeating.
These three inappropriate and harmful activities – worrying, hurrying, and overeating – are daily choices that Americans make, and these choices are driving them crazy. Mental health in the country is going to hell in a hand basket.
Go read the rest.
Tension and stress in modern American life. Didn’t you have a piece like last Friday on how suicide among middle aged Americans is up 30% in the last year or two?? If the 1% aren’t stealing all your money or their political hirelings are letting them poison or blow you up, then their teabagging supporters are trying to shoot you in the street. And the American press is busy telling you nobody could have foreseen these problems, nothing can really be done because taxing millionaires is the same as shooting school children and anyway it’s all in your mind. Nope no stress here.