Black Obesity and Disproportionate COVID-19 Deaths

by Kenny Anderson

Black folks, I clearly get it that one can big and beautiful, yes I get the need for self-esteem and being sexy. I understand the acronym BBW ‘Big Beautiful Women and Big Black Women’.

However I also get it from a medical ‘health perspective’ that being too big and Black ‘overweight and obese’ causes many chronic diseases. Studies show that over 70% of Black women are overweight or obese. I understand obesity is a more complex health issue to address, it’s much more than ‘BMI’ measuring excessive body weight.

Obesity results from a combination of causes and contributing factors, including individual factors such as behavior and genetics. Behaviors can include dietary patterns, physical activity, inactivity, medication use, and other exposures. Additional contributing factors include racism, poverty, stress, mental health; the food and physical activity environment, education and skills, and food marketing and promotion.

Despite the complexity of the causes of obesity being too big and beautiful aint gone stop severe health problems; it aint gone stop heart disease, stroke, diabetes, hypertension, etc! Recent evidence shows that obesity is associated with a higher risk of developing severe symptoms and complications of Coronavirus Disease 19 independent of other illnesses.

Sistas this post aint about ‘fat shaming’, it’s briefly ‘fact stating’ about obesity related killer diseases. Unfortunately COVID-19 don’t care nothing about ‘BBW’, it's causing disproportionate ’BBD’ Big Black Deaths.

Blacks' High Diabetes Risk Driven By Obesity Not Mystery

Study Flips Belief in 'Unexplained' Reason for Double the Rate of Midlife Diabetes in Blacks 

In a surprising finding, Blacks and whites have the same risk of developing diabetes when all biological factors for the disease are considered over time, reports a large new Northwestern Medicine study. 

The finding flips long-held beliefs that there is an unexplained or genetic reason why Blacks have double the rate of diabetes compared to whites by midlife, which is considered early onset. 

"Obesity is driving these differences," said senior study author Mercedes Carnethon, associate professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "The findings surprised us, because for the past 20 years there was a narrative that there must be something we haven't found that was causing this higher rate." 

Previous studies have found higher rates of diabetes in Blacks are still present even when risk factors for diabetes such as obesity and lower socioeconomic status are taken into account.

But this study, for the first time, identified a combination of modifiable risk factors over time - body mass index, fat around the abdomen, fasting glucose levels, lipids, blood pressure and lung function that drive the higher rate of diabetes. When all of these were factored out, there were no disparities between Black and white men or women.

Before the authors accounted for the differences in risk factors, Black women had nearly three times the risk for developing diabetes as white women. "Blacks gained more weight over time," Carnethon said. "It was the accumulation of this and other risk factors that eliminated the so-called mysterious cause of the disparity."

In previous studies, researchers measured such health behaviors as obesity, physical activity and diet once during their study participants' lives. But these factors can change over time, and how much they change may be different in each race group. 

For example, a white woman and a Black woman may be the same weight at age 35 but if that Black woman gains more weight over the next 15 years, her risk for developing diabetes goes up. 

The Northwestern study measured these changes in her weight over time, along with changes in other related health behaviors and health risk factors. When scientists accounted for these changes in risk factors for diabetes, they did not observe race differences in the development of diabetes.

The findings are particularly important because the incidence of diabetes is rising in Black youth ages 10 to 19 years old. Another recent study showed from 2002 to 2012 the incidence of diabetes remained fairly stable for non-Hispanic white youth (ages 10-19) but increased annually by more than 6 percent for non-Hispanic black youth.

There is no easy fix for the problem, which is driven by a combination of biological, neighborhood, psychosocial, socioeconomic and behavioral factors, the authors said.

"To eliminate the higher rate of diabetes, everybody needs to have access to healthy foods, safe spaces for physical activity and equal economic opportunity to have enough money to afford these things and live in communities that offer this," said lead study author Michael Bancks, a postdoctoral fellow in preventive medicine at Feinberg.

Changing risk behaviors in childhood and adolescence is key because that's when risky health behaviors develop and damage begins to accumulate, Bancks said

The research is part of the observational cohort Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. CARDIA was started in 1985-1986, enrolling 5,115 Black and white men and women who were 18 to 30 years of age from Birmingham, Alabama; Oakland, California; Minneapolis and Chicago.

The Northwestern study sample included 4,251 individuals from the original study. Individuals were followed through 2015 to 2016 for the development of diabetes, which was assessed at eight follow-up examinations over these 30 years using standard diagnostic criteria for diabetes.

"If we could wave a magic wand and get rid of risk factors, then we could eliminate the disparity," Carnethon said. "But we can't do that. Still, we now know there is no mystery to these higher rates. Our efforts to control the traditional risk factors can work to reduce the disparities we observe in diabetes incidence."

*Kiarri Kershaw is a Northwestern co-author of the paper

How I Overcame Emotional Eating Becoming at Peace with Food

by Celestine Chua

During my battle with emotional eating, there were several times I tried to talk to a close friend about it. I was frustrated and needed someone who knew me, to hear me out.

Unfortunately, my good friend, who had a normal relationship with food, was not able to empathize with the situation. When I shared my suspicion that I had an issue with food, she told me I was theorizing the situation into something bigger than what it was. She said it was just a matter of being conscious of my food choices and not eating when I was nearly full, which were things I knew long ago.

Not able to get the support I was looking for, I stopped talking about the issue with her, or anyone for that matter. My conclusion was that if even a good friend couldn’t understand what I was going through, then no one in the world would ever understand.

I eventually found other good friends whom I could speak to about the problem, but for that period of time, I felt pretty upset that there wasn’t anyone I could talk to about what I was going through. I felt alone in the problem – helpless, dejected, and forsaken.

Quiet Madness

There were many nights when I would do nothing about my emotional eating and just go with the flow, via bingeing my emotions away and hiding in the comfort of food.

But every once in a blue moon, I would regain consciousness for a brief second and wonder “What the heck am I doing?” I wanted out, I was caught in a loop of eating, overeating, feeling bad the next day, then eating, overeating, and feeling bad the next day. The exact same situation and exact same feelings, if not worse. I felt I was not moving on in life.

I wanted to overcome the problem, because it was a blockade in my development. Not only was my emotional eating thwarting my desire to live healthily, it lowered my self-esteem where body image was concerned. Also, a good deal of my emotions and energy were wasted every day on emotional eating, which l could easily invest in other areas of my life.

So I worked on it. Because the issue was linked with other, equally compounded issues (such as low self-esteem and poor body image), progress was slow. Many days, I would slip back into bingeing mode, though I grew more conscious each time. And each time I ate to feed my emotions and/or binged, I would grow more weary of it. It gave me the impetus to resolve the issue once and for all.

Resolution – Becoming at Peace with Food

After a long while, I finally became at peace with food. 2011 marked the year where I dug deep into my emotional eating issues and unbuckled myself from the chains of food, one at a time. There were a lot of things I did and realizations which helped me to move on. I’ve highlighted the key ones below.

Resetting My Relationship with Food (via Fasting)

Because my emotional eating issue was heavily compounded, problem-resolution methods like brain dumping and self-introspection were of little help. I was like a fly wrapped in a thick spider web, unable to get anywhere.

Water fasting helped immensely in clearing that web and giving me a new start. Through my 21-Day fast I cleared out a lot of polarized, false beliefs I had surrounding food.

Some beliefs were absolutely ridiculous, such as a deep-seated fear that I would die right away if I ever stopped feeding myself, or that I should feed myself as often as possible, otherwise I would not be loving myself. I didn’t even know I had such beliefs until I did the fast.

The 21-day fast gave me a precious opportunity to examine my relationship with food. So were the subsequent 7-day fasts I did in April and May, and 1-2 day fasts I did every 2 months thereafter. Each fast helped me come to new realizations surrounding my emotional eating issue.

Even then, fasting was only a start. I could abstain from eating without any problem, but food is something we have to consume to survive. Abstinence was not a permanent solution; if I had to turn to fasting each time to reset my relationship with food, I would only be jumping from one crutch to another. I had to find a way to integrate food back into my life, where the relationship would be a healthy one, not one of emotional dependency.

Developing New Eating Cues

I found one of my problems was eating based on irrelevant cues. Say, when there was food available. When others were eating. When I passed by a food stall. When it was lunch/dinner time. 

When I felt like eating. When I thought I should eat. When I was offered food. When there was still food left. Of course, none of these factors had anything to do with whether I should eat or not. My irrational eating would make me binge thereafter because I was angry at myself for eating even when I didn’t need to.

When should I eat then? I developed 3 guidelines to help me decide when I should eat or stop. The first one is intrinsic hunger cues. I would eat only when there is a sensation of hunger in my stomach. This is a slightly warm, acidic, empty, and at times, gurgling, feeling. I would eat when this arises, and stop when my stomach is halfway full.

The second one is via caloric count. I would eat to match my caloric needs for the day. This is a precise, foolproof method, since it determines how much energy my body needs each day.

The third is my nutritional needs. I would eat to match my nutritional needs as per my ideal diet, such as the proportion of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats I should take in, sufficiency in vitamins and minerals, adequate water, and ample fruit and vegetable servings.

These 3 methods helped me get a hold of my reality of hunger, which had been highly distorted after all these years. I changed from eating all the time, based on subconscious triggers, to a eating pattern that was more grounded in my needs. It brought stability where eating was concerned.

Understanding My Eating Triggers; Breaking Subconscious Beliefs

On top of developing new eating cues, I processed my emotional eating triggers, one by one. These were subconscious wirings that fired me off to eat in spite of non-hunger.

For every situation, I would dissect it and identify the subconscious beliefs making me eat. I would dig into those beliefs to understand them. Resolution of those beliefs typically resulted in breaking of the pattern. I knew until I dealt with them at the root, they would not go away.

For example, I noticed I would eat every time I came home, without fail. When I looked into the trigger, I realized it was because I would be tired after a long commute and food was my way of rewarding myself. Of course, it was unnecessary. There were other ways of rewarding myself, such as with a good rest. Food was the least form of reward because it would thwart my dieting efforts.

I would also be triggered to eat whenever I went off-track on my diet, because I would feel bad for my “failure”. I would want to eat out of self-punishment, just to thwart my healthy living efforts. The loss of control over my eating patterns was debilitating. I addressed this by developing new eating cues (see above), removing self-enforced pressure to “perform” in my diet or “look” a certain way (which was part of the pressure behind my diet), and allowing myself to go off-track in my diet.

Yet another trigger would be when I made myself work even though I was tired. I would eat so I would stay awake. Or when I made myself do work I didn’t want to do (such as writing an article on A when I would much rather write an article on B). 

I realized I was eating to compensate for pushing myself against my will. What helped was when I stopped making myself do things, and instead listened to my intuition on what to do next – which led me to a more impactful outcome than before.

I had a truckload of emotional eating triggers, but I didn’t let them stop me. I simply worked through them, one by one. Each time a trigger arose, I would examine and work through it slowly, until it got resolved. It took a while (8-9 months, in fact) to iron them out, but they eventually dwindled from a massive web of triggers, to a small handful, to eventually none.

Taking Ownership Over My Meals

I realized I often ate more than I desired or ate food I didn’t want to because I didn’t take ownership over my meals. For example: If I was in a restaurant, I would order mains over sides, even if I preferred the sides, because I would feel like a sore thumb for eating only sides. I was afraid of eating too little (even if I wasn’t hungry), because it would suggest I wasn’t taking care of myself.

If others were eating, I would feel obligated to join in and eat too. If people prepared a meal for me, I would eat what they cooked, because I would feel like I let them down otherwise. If someone offered me food, I would feel obliged to take it vs. rejecting it, for the same reason.

If I was in a restaurant/cafe (with others or by myself), I would order food even if I didn’t want to eat, because I didn’t want to be an noncontributing patron. (Though I could easily order just mineral water or get something to go.)

If I was in a restaurant/cafe that did not have food I want (such as healthy food), I would compromise by ordering the better of the lesser food options, say less unhealthy food. (Though I could just opt not to eat and buy my food elsewhere.)

If there was something I had not eaten before, I would want to try that, even though I could go for healthier, better options. Otherwise, I would feel like I was missing out on the experience. (In reality I was missing out on better health and a happier life.)

Clearly, I was letting my environment determine my eating decisions. I was not standing up for my truest intentions. Because of that, it would result in emotional eating, which would then lead to bingeing later on, because of my emotional eating (it was a circular problem).

In stopping this cycle, I had to learn several things, including learning to say no, detaching the actions from the intentions of the person offering me food, detaching social perceptions that came with eating/not eating, removing self-imposed expectations that I should eat just because others were eating, among others.

At the same time, I also learned to pack my meals / bring fruits out if I anticipated going without food for some time, consult my intuition before I make my food choices / eat, plan my meals in advance, decide when/what I want to eat, eat only things I truly wanted to eat, order sides over mains if I only wanted to eat sides, among others.

All of these helped me take ownership of my meals and stand up for my ideal diet, which in turn helped me stand up for myself.

Learning to Deal with My Issues vs. Turning to Food

I was using food as an avoidance outlet subconsciously, looking back whenever I felt feelings of low self-esteem (inferiority regarding my body, overwhelm, or sadness), I would seek solace in food.

Instead of solving the problem, I would eat my unhappiness away. In place of that, was a false feeling of happiness, which would no sooner disappear after I was done eating. The reason why that happened was because I found those problems too big for me to handle. This was why I (subconsciously) turned to food as my crutch.

My quest to break free from emotional eating eventually made me cognizant what was happening behind the “slips” and late night binges (which was becoming worse and worse). Every time I “slipped”, I would binge even more than in the past.

It would take several rounds of bingeing and self-hating before I finally decided “this was it”. I was sick and tired of repeating the same thing over and over again. Not only was I suffering the consequences of overeating, I was killing my soul every time I did it. It certainly didn’t resolve the originating problems either (e.g. overeating wasn’t going to address feelings of low self-esteem), which would reemerge when the same conditions were in place.

I started to look into my eating triggers (as I shared above), which led me to discover problems I didn’t know I was hiding from. Each time I emerged, I would work through them, one by one. Eventually, this removed my emotional dependency on food.

Listening to My Heart

Developing a stronger connection with my heart helped tremendously in tackling my emotional eating issues. Rather than do things because I think I want to, I began to consult my intuition, and let it guide me.

For example, let’s say I’m in a restaurant. I would order based on what my heart goes for. So if I want this steamed spinach roll that is smaller in portion but cost more, I would order that, rather than go for the lunch special that costs less but isn’t what I ideally want. Or say, if I’m working on my site. I would write based on what my heart is telling me to write, rather than what I think I should cover. Or even, if I’m out with friends and some of them want to go to X location, I would check what my intuition wants and go with that.

Interesting, the more I followed my heart, the more aligned I became, as a person. I noticed whenever I went against my heart, I would get triggered to eat, as if my higher self was trying to tell me something. 

Looking back, it was because I was hurting my soul whenever I went against my true intentions. And since I subconsciously saw food as love (which was an issue in itself – see next point on “Seeing Food as What It Is”), I would eat to fill up that void (which of course, was not a real solution).

Seeing Food as What It Is

Last but not least, I began to detach my emotions from food, and see food as what it truly is – food. Previously, I had been making food out to be so much more than what it was. I had seen it as a companion, a best friend, a pillar of support. It was there to comfort me when I felt down. It was there with me when I celebrated happy times. It was a never-changing constant I came to count on whenever I needed it.

But since food is a non-living thing, it was incapable of reciprocating any of my emotions. I had entered into a one-way relationship with food, where I would “love”, “crave”, or even “detest” it, and none of my intents would be returned in any form. In reality, I was just battling with myself. If food was a living being, it would have thought I was crazy.

After I demystified food, and recognized that it was/is just a composite of ingredients, just something to fuel my body, and not a friend, buddy, or symbol of love as I had made it out to be (fasting helped me a lot in demystifying this notion), my views on eating and food became more rooted in reality. No more turning to food out of irrationality. No more personification of what is not even alive. No more giving of my power away to something that is not me.

In Conclusion

It has been one heck of a train ride, one immensely eye-opening journey, and one which I’m happy to be able to put behind me today. While it hasn’t been easy working through the intricacies of my emotional eating issue, I’m glad to have finally made it through.

What helped immensely has been my constant efforts to work through it. That no matter how many times I responded to my problems via eating, no matter how many times I binged despite of my better wishes, I would return to troubleshoot the situation later.

One by one, the problems got resolved. Step by step, I gained a hold over my eating. And eventually, the invisible voices that would trigger me to eat, even when I didn’t need to, disappeared. And in place of that, was a sense of peace where eating was concerned – something I never thought was possible.

I hope the sharing of my emotional eating journey has been helpful to those of you who are emotional eaters. I want you to know that like all situations in life, emotional eating is very much resolvable, and it’s up to whether you want to address it or not.

Movie: Post-Traumatic Slave Diet

There is a current obesity epidemic in the Black community that's a major contributing factor to the alarming high rates of killer chronic Black illnesses such as Heart Disease, Strokes, and Diabetes. 

The movie below 'Post-Traumatic Slave Diet' explores our forced 'dysfunctional' and 'disordered' relationship with food originating in our racist enslavement.

We’re Losing More People to the Sweets Than to the Streets’: Why Two Black Pastors are Suing Coca-Cola

by Caitlin Dewey

William Lamar, the senior pastor at D.C.’s historic Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church, is tired of presiding over funerals for parishioners who died of heart disease, diabetes and stroke.

So on Thursday, he and another prominent African American pastor filed suit against Coca-Cola and the American Beverage Association, claiming soda manufacturers knowingly deceived customers about the health risks of sugar-sweetened beverages  at enormous cost to their communities.

The complaint, filed in D.C. Superior Court Thursday on behalf of the pastors and the Praxis Project, a public health group, alleges that Coke and the ABA ran an intentional campaign to confuse consumers about the causes of obesity.

Lamar and Delman Coates, the pastor at Maryland’s Mount Ennon Baptist Church, claim soda marketing has made it more difficult for them to protect the health of their largely black, D.C.-based parishioners.

Their case is similar to another suit that was filed, and later withdrawn, by the same legal team in California last January.

The lawsuit marks a break with tradition for African American and Latino community groups who have been reliable allies of Big Soda for years in policy fights across the country despite overwhelming evidence that the harms of drinking soda impact their communities disproportionately.

Obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and lower-extremity amputations are all far higher among people of color than among whites. These communities also drink more soda and are exposed to more soda advertising.

“It’s become really clear to me that we’re losing more people to the sweets than to the streets,” said Coates, who said he has seen members of his congregation give their infants bottles filled with sugary drinks. “There’s a great deal of misinformation in our communities, and I think that’s largely a function of these deceptive marketing campaigns.”

In a statement, Coca-Cola dismissed the pastors' charges and the merits of the earlier lawsuit in California, which lawyers say they withdrew to refile with the new plaintiffs. "The allegations here are likewise legally and factually meritless, and we will vigorously defend against them," the statement said. "The Coca-Cola Company understands that we have a role to play in helping people reduce their sugar consumption."

This suit, much like the prior one in California, argues that the beverage industry has deceived consumers about the unique link between soda consumption and diseases such as obesity and Type 2 diabetes, using messaging tactics similar to those once deployed by tobacco companies.

According to the complaint, Coca-Cola executives have invested millions of dollars in research, sponsored blog posts and advertising campaigns intended to disprove or confuse the link between soda consumption and disease.

The company’s ads and its executives, as well as a number of compensated nutrition bloggers, have also advanced the argument that lack of exercise is primarily responsible for the obesity epidemic, and that the calories consumed in soda can be easily offset by increasing physical activity.

In 2013, Coca-Cola developed a 30-second prime-time TV ad, called “Be OK,” that claimed a brief walk, a single “victory dance” or a brief laughing spell were sufficient to burn the 140 calories in a Coke can.

Coca-Cola Senior Vice President Katie Bayne also famously told a USA Today reporter in 2012 that “there is no scientific evidence that connects sugary beverages to obesity.”

The suit argues that science shows otherwise: There is, in fact, a well-established link between soda consumption and obesity, though the exact mechanism of that link is not well understood.

A 20-year study of 120,000 adults, published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2011, found that people who drank an extra soda per day gained more weight over time than those who did not. Other large-scale studies have found that soda drinkers have a greater chance of developing Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and gout.

Those epidemics are even worse among communities of color, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Obesity impacts nearly half of all African Americans and 42 percent of Latinos, vs. just over one-third of whites.

A 2016 study in the Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities also found that soda consumption was a particularly strong predictor of future weight gain for black children.

“There’s a health crisis in the U.S., especially in our communities, and especially among children,” said Xavier Morales, the executive director of the Praxis Project. This is not coincidental, he added: “They target our communities with their marketing. We’re going into those communities trying to save lives, and they’re going out and erasing our message.”

The soda industry has argued that, on the contrary, they’ve done a lot to support communities of color and the fight against obesity. In recent years, these companies have grown their portfolios of low-calorie and no-calorie beverages.

“We support the recommendation of the World Health Organization (W.H.O.), that people should limit their intake of added sugar to no more than 10 percent of their total daily calorie intake. We have begun a journey toward that goal," Coke said in a statement. 

"So we are taking action to offer people more drinks in smaller, more convenient sizes, reducing sugar in many of our existing beverages, and making more low and no-sugar beverage choices available and easier to find at local stores. We’ll also continue making calorie and nutrition information clear and accessible so people can make more informed choices for themselves and their families without the guesswork.”

Soda companies have also, through the American Beverage Association, funded a number of nutrition and healthy cooking programs in low-income neighborhoods in New York, Los Angeles and other cities. ABA’s partners on that project include the National Council of La Raza and the National Urban League.

“America’s beverage companies know we have an important role to play in addressing our nation’s health challenges. That’s why we’re engaging with health groups and community organizations to drive a reduction in the sugar and calories Americans get from beverages," the ABA said in a statement. "Unfounded accusations like these won’t do anything to address health concerns, but the actions we’re taking, particularly in areas where obesity rates are among the highest, can make a difference.”

The ABA also disputes the contention that there's a link between obesity and soda. “Beverages are not driving obesity rates," the organization said. "Obesity has been going up steadily for years while soda consumption has been going down steadily. Shouldn’t obesity rates have gone down with the reduction in soda consumption if the two are connected?”

But companies such as Coca-Cola do still market more to Latino and black communities a function of the fact that they drink sugary beverages at a greater volume than whites.

Multiple studies by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at the University of Connecticut have found that soda advertisements appear more frequently during TV shows targeted to black audiences. Black teens see three times as many Coca-Cola ads than white teens do. Billboards and other signs for low-nutrient foods show up more in black and Latino neighborhoods.

And yet, minority communities have historically been stalwart allies of large soda-makers, Coca-Cola included. As New York University professor Marion Nestle details in her book “Soda Politics,” those companies have been major funders of minority advocacy groups, including the NAACP, since the 1950s — a strategy initially intended to expose soda to new demographics.

Advocacy groups representing people of color, including local chapters of the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation, have since become instrumental in beating back soda taxes in places such as New York, Richmond, Calif., and Santa Fe, N.M. When the American Beverage Association sued to prevent the implementation of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s soda tax in early 2013, both the NAACP and Hispanic Federation filed a brief in support of it.

Lamar said he was grateful that companies such as Coca-Cola had supported these organizations but that their philanthropy did not “negate the science or the fact that their marketing is mendacious.”

“This campaign of deception has also been bestowed on the leadership of our major Latino and black organizations,” Coates added. “The leaders of many of these organizations, like the average lay person, is just not aware of the science.”

That represents a shift that Nestle calls “highly significant.” “In the past, this community has supported the soda industry in opposing public health measures even though the health impact of sugary drinks is higher in that community,” she told The Washington Post. “It is highly significant that this community is joining the CSPI lawsuit. It should put the soda industry on notice that it needs to stop targeting African Americans who are at high risk of chronic diseases encouraged by sugary drink consumption.”

But it is unclear whether the suit will ultimately have more than a glancing impact on the beverage industry. Coke and the American Beverage Association do not need to respond to the complaint until September. At that point, Maia Kats the litigation director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest and one of the lawyers on the case said she believes they will push for dismissal.

In the meantime, Lamar and Coates say, they will continue visiting hospitals, and overseeing funerals, for members of their churches suffering from obesity-related illnesses.

“I am disgusted by the number of hospital visits I make,” Lamar said. “It just adds to the injustices all around us.”

Chronic Stress and Black Obesity

by Kenny Anderson

A recent study found Black teens who experience racial discrimination in adolescence are more likely to develop stress-related health issues that could put them at risk for chronic diseases later in life. 

Specifically, researchers found that they were more likely to have higher levels of blood pressure, a higher body mass index, and higher levels of stress-related hormones once they turned 20; about twenty percent of Black children are obese - one of the highest child obesity rate in the US.

According to another study analyzing of data from the epidemiologic study Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span (HANDLS), conducted by the National Institute on Aging (NIA) and the National Institutes of Health found that the consequences of psychological stress, resulting from racial discrimination, may contribute to racial health disparities in conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and other age-associated diseases.

For several decades various research has shown the connection between chronic stress and obesity. African Americans suffer more chronic stress which includes unending feelings of despair/hopelessness, poverty, family dysfunctional stress, early childhood traumatic experiences, experienced and perceived racial discrimination, neighborhood stress, daily stress, acculturative stress, and environmental stress.

To reduce the tremendous compounded daily stress that Blacks face we too often turn to high calorie junk food and comfort food to soothe and relax us. This constant stress reaction to emotionally eat fattening food for distress relief results in significant weight gain 'obesity' that is a main risk-factor in chronic diseases. 

Currently African American adults are nearly 1.5 times as likely to be obese compared with White adults. Approximately 47.8 percent of African Americans are obese (including 37.1 percent of men and 56.6 percent of women) compared with 32.6 percent of Whites (including 32.4 percent of men and 32.8 percent of women.

Study Finds Obesity Significantly Increases Prostate Cancer Risk in African-American Men

April 16, 2015 

Obesity has a profoundly different effect on prostate cancer risk in African-American as compared to non-Hispanic white men. Obesity in black men substantially increases the risk of low- and high-grade prostate cancer, while obesity in white men moderately reduces the risk of low-grade cancer and only slightly increases the risk of high-grade cancer, according to the first large, prospective study to examine how race and obesity jointly affect prostate cancer risk.

The findings, published April 16 in JAMA Oncology were based on a nationwide study led by researchers at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and the University of Washington. The research team, led by senior author Alan Kristal Dr.P.H., a member of the Fred Hutch Public Health Sciences Division, and first and corresponding author Wendy Barrington Ph.D. an affiliate public health investigator at Fred Hutch and an assistant professor at the University of Washington School of Nursing, found that black men who are obese (a body-mass index of 35 or higher) had a 122 percent increased risk of low-grade and an 81 percent increased risk of high-grade prostate cancer compared to those who were of normal weight (a BMI of 25 or lower). 

In contrast, among non-Hispanic white men, those who were obese had a 20 percent reduced risk of low-grade and only a 33 percent increased risk of high-grade prostate cancer compared to those of normal weight. 

“For unknown reasons, African-American men have a much higher risk of prostate cancer than non-Hispanic white men. Different effects of obesity might explain at least some of the difference in risk and, more importantly, preventing obesity in African-American men could substantially lower their prostate cancer risk,” Kristal said.

According to the National Cancer Institute, black men have the highest prostate cancer rates of any racial or ethnic group in the U.S., they tend to get more aggressive forms of this cancer and are more than twice as likely to die of the disease as compared to non-Hispanic white men. These elevated risks for African-American men are due to both social disadvantage, such as access to resources, as well as biologic factors, Barrington said.

This study suggests obesity, which is influenced by both social and biologic factors, may play an important role behind what Kristal and Barrington call the “African-American race effect” on disparities in prostate cancer risk. More than a third of the U.S. population is classified as obese, and the prevalence of obesity among African-American men is slightly higher – 37 percent – compared to 32 percent in non-Hispanic white men, Barrington said.

“Given that obesity is more common among African-Americans, [the prostate cancer-obesity connection] is an important question to study, as it may shed light on how to reduce black/white disparities in prostate cancer incidence,” she said.

The study was based on data collected during the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial, known as the SELECT Study, an international clinical trial that tested whether supplemental selenium and/or vitamin E could prevent prostate cancer. More than 35,000 men from across the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico participated.

Study participants, including nearly 3,400 African-American men, were followed carefully for the development of cancer and other diseases, and a single study pathologist examined prostate tissue from the men diagnosed with prostate cancer to determine whether it was low- or high-grade disease. The trial ended early, because after an average of five years there was no evidence that either of the supplements lowered prostate cancer risk.

The study did, however, provide a treasure trove of high-quality data on risk factors such as race, height, weight and family history, as well as the use of prostate-cancer screening. The obesity finding was “serendipitous” and “potentially of enormous importance,” Kristal said. “In an unrelated analysis we wanted to statistically control for effects of obesity. We noticed that the associations of obesity with prostate cancer risk in African-American men were very different than those for non-Hispanic white men.”

What drives the disparity? “There is some evidence that the biological responses to obesity, such as inflammation and glucose tolerance, are more pronounced in African-American men; both inflammation and insulin may promote cancer development,” Kristal said. Obesity might also have an impact on genes that control prostate cancer growth, “but frankly this is just speculation,” he said. “This is the next question for researchers to ask, because the answer will likely tell something very important about prostate cancer development and prevention.”

While the study’s findings concerning obesity and prostate cancer risk in black men are novel and need to be replicated, they underline the ongoing public health toll of the obesity epidemic.

“Obesity prevention and treatment should be a priority for all Americans, but in particular for African-American men,” Barrington said. “Prostate cancer kills 45 out of 100,000 African-Americans and only 19 out of 100,000 white men, and obesity is contributing to this important health disparity. Health care providers need to consider obesity prevention for their African-American male patients as a targeted strategy to reduce prostate cancer disparities.”