Succeeding Against the Odds Can Make You Sick (opens in new tab)

I wonder how much of it actually boils down to chronically high cortisol levels. People that perceive stress as harmfull are more prone to its damage and we know that positive thoughts and meditation can negate that effect to some degree or even produce benefits.

Knowing that effect exists is one thing, but how do we protect ourselves ?

In chronic making of cortisol adrenal gland becomes deficient in Vitamin C which is used in the process [1]. This has direct effect on immunity (all animals produce more vitmin C in stresfull times to protect from it). Chronic insufficiency will not lead to scurvy (you only need tiny amount of C to prevent that) but will produce ill health particularly combined with smoking and bad eating habits which is typical for lower socioeconomic class (talking about it, blacks, the most affected, are regularly deficient in vitamin D too, another potent immunity booster).

The effect is multifactorial from that point - for example Vitamin C insufficiency changes cholesterol transformation to bile acids which leads to high cholesterol levels [2] which can provide some explanation for cardiovascular events.

Insufficiency is the level that will not result in terminal disease but in suboptimal health and shorter lifespan (i.e. RDA sux) because body will start to utilize triage [3].

Hence, I suggest everybody to forget about 60mg bullshit and use couple of grams of Vitamin C as few daily doses to protect from John Henryism effect. Afterall, that is what our closest relatives who have the same disfunctinal GULO gene - primates - do: they eat grams of C in the wild.

[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/145.long

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/4685043

[3] http://www.bruceames.org/Triage.pdf

Sounds plausible.

"The term was first used by Gary Saretsky (1972) to describe the behavior of John Henry, a legendary American steel driver in the 1870s who, when he heard his output was being compared with that of a steam drill, worked so hard to outperform the machine he died in the process"

Is reality that people who succeed against the odds are more likely to get sick, or that people who get sick frequently are more likely to fight against the odds?

Poverty in youth, is a predictor of future poor health outcomes. This is the conclusion of so many Dunedin study papers. [0] An unexpected finding, the effects of poverty are ^not^ reversed by future wealth. I can't find the specific study for this, however another report displays another unexpected find, "The high-need/high-cost group of adults could be identified as young as age 3years on the basis of their ‘brain health,’". [1]

While poverty is the root cause, race determines poverty, the health outcomes are lifelong.

Reference

[0] http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/publications

[1] http://dunedinstudy.otago.ac.nz/news-and-events/article/53

And somehow they manage to tie it back to Trump

This is garbage. What actually is the source of all this unneeded suffering is when people choose to believe the all-pervasive Western media, movie, and music refrain that success is measured by material wealth and prosperity. The Protestant work ethic has nothing to do with an ego-fueled, greedy striving for material wealth at all costs.

The Protestant work ethic is centered on the notion that work is a holy vocation, ordained by God. This belief stems back to when God placed man in the garden of Eden to work the garden (Genesis 2:15). The Protestant work ethic is working simply for the sake of enjoying the gift of labor, which was deemed very good at the beginning. Further, the Protestant work ethic also makes room for a Sabbath day of rest, something often foreign to American successaholics.

Lastly, both Jesus (Mark 4:18-20) and Paul (1 Timothy 6:8-10) and Solomon (Proverbs 23:4) make it abundantly clear the sacrifices involved with worshiping wealth and material prosperity (i.e. the standard-issue "American Dream")