Quotes About Health

The low rate of infant mortality is a product of data manipulation. At seventy-two abortions per one hundred births, Cuba has one of the highest abortion rates in the world, and Cuban doctors routinely force women to abort high-risk pregnancies so that Cuba's bureaucrats can brag about their health statistics. If you correct the data to account for these factors, Cuba's health statistics look a lot less impressive.5

the connecting fibers of the corpus callosum;

We've got to get rid of the mentality that if there are no holes in you, then you're ready for duty.

exhausted people do not make the best decisions.

We love stress that is mild and transient and occurs in a benevolent context.

Males who do extreme amounts of exercise, such as professional soccer players and runners who cover more than 40 or 50 miles a week, have less LHRH, LH, and testosterone in their circulation, smaller testes, less functional sperm. They also have higher levels of glucocorticoids in their bloodstreams, even in the absence of stress. (A similar decline in reproductive function is found in men who are addicted to opiate drugs.)

if you want to increase your chances of avoiding stress-related diseases, make sure you don't inadvertently allow yourself to be born poor.

Something roughly akin to love is needed for proper biological development, and its absence is among the most aching, distorting stressors that we can suffer.

It is never really the case that stress makes you sick, or even increases your risk of being sick. Stress increases your risk of getting diseases that make you sick, or if you have such a disease, stress increases the risk of your defenses being overwhelmed by the disease.

Parts of the book describe work carried out in my own laboratory, and these studies have been made possible by funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, the Sloan Foundation, the Klingenstein Fund, the Alzheimer's Association, and the Adler Foundation.

glucocorticoids in

the worst stress-related health typically occurs in middle management, with its killer combo of high work demands but little autonomy—responsibility without control.

The health risk of poverty turns out to be a huge effect, the biggest risk factor there is in all of behavioral medicine—in other words, if you have a bunch of people of the same gender, age, and ethnicity and you want to make some predictions about who is going to live how long, the single most useful fact to know is each person's SES.

contemporary studies show that the worst stress-related health typically occurs in middle management, with its killer combo of high work demands but little autonomy—responsibility without control.

What the data show: the fewer social relationships a person has, the shorter his or her life expectancy, and the worse the impact of various infectious diseases. Relationships that are medically protective can take the form of marriage, contact with friends and extended family, church membership, or other group affiliations.

The impact of social relationships on life expectancy appears to be at least as large as that of variables such as cigarette smoking, hypertension, obesity, and level of physical activity.

A large body of evidence suggests that stress-related disease emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about mortgages, relationships, and promotions.

Our nights are filled with worries about a different class of diseases; we are now living well enough and long enough to slowly fall apart.

What Wilkinson and others have shown is that poverty is not only a predictor of poor health but, independent of absolute income, so is poverty amid plenty—the more income inequality there is in a society, the worse the health and mortality rates.

by the year 2020, depression is projected to be the second leading cause of medical disability on earth.

About forty per cent of all strokes are unexplained. They're a mystery, like life itself.

You are dehydrated, I said. The result of alcohol taken in excess. But that is the only way to take it. It is the only way to do a man any good.

It is not much different from a person who goes to the gym to exercise on a regular basis versus someone who sits on the couch watching television. Proper physical exercise increases your chances of health, and proper mental exercise increases your chances for wealth. Laziness decreases both health and wealth.

Proper physical exercise increases your chances of health, and proper mental exercise increases your chances for wealth. Laziness decreases both health and wealth.