According to one study of the effects of economic stress on lifespan, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, life expectancy of Americans in the lowest income economic level (<$15,000/year) is more than 10 years less than those with the highest income group (>$50,000/year). (1) The study then noted that income alone might not be the direct reason for the lowered longevity, and healthy lifestyle was a major mitigating factor. However, the study clearly shows that something about the low economic status is impacting lifespan. Could the problem be stress, rather than income?
We know that economic status has a huge impact on quality of life. Life in poor neighborhoods is difficult, and since crime is often higher in such areas, life there is also more dangerous. Stress levels are not only high because of the difficulty of making enough money to eat and pay rent, but also because daily life is hard. The reason that lifespan drops in poor areas is stress. The stress comes in many forms, but it is the real culprit.
Our bodies have no idea what our economic status is. They only know the environment we provide them: that environment includes not only the nutrition we provide, but also the stress we give them. When we isolate economic status, which does impact stress levels, we see a correlation with poverty, but only because of the stressful environment.
What stress does
Stress is a killer. It kills gradually through inflammation. When inflammation occurs, it is always provoked, and it means damage is occurring in the inflamed area. If the whole body is inflamed, it is degenerating, and that shortens lifespan. Each cell feels the stress, and organs, which are made up of cells, may lose function. Even if no disease such as cancer is launched, the inflamed body is falling apart prematurely.
We correctly associate many diseases with stress. Fatigue, brain fog, and depression are often associated with chronic stress. Indigestion, heart disease, and chronic illnesses are often understood to be related to stress. In reality, most organ malfunction or chronic disease traces back to chronic stress, not just those we expect to be related.
Consider a study published in Psychosomatic Medicine. Kidney function is not something we would normally connect with stress. Since financial hardship is an external source of stress, this study pins reduced kidney filtration rate to this stress because the researchers show that those suffering financial hardship also lose kidney function. Simply stated, they found “the negative effects of financial hardship on age-related decrements in renal clearance.” Kidneys are vital filters of toxins, and kidney failure is a frequent disease, especially in the elderly. (2) This study measured the serum creatinine–based estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) to detect loss of kidney function, and they saw that the stress of financial hardship correlated with reductions in eGFR.
Had they chosen a different type of stress, the results would likely have been the same. Cells and organs can’t tell what type of stress is being telegraphed to them, they just know that they are receiving stress signals. The impact of stress is always a sacrifice of the long term for short term gain. That’s what stress is designed to do: there is an emergency requiring immediate, extraordinary response, and it mortgages the future to get that performance now. When the stress is temporary, even if it is acute, the body can rest and repair soon and the damage is gone quickly. But when the stress is chronic, the body isn’t rebuilding sufficiently and the damage goes deeper, and organ damage is a likely result over time. The study is focusing on a single example, but all organs are vulnerable to chronic stress.
Stress Aging is Predictable
A review study, published in Cell, identified nine “hallmarks of aging.” These hallmarks are: genomic instability, telomere attrition, epigenetic alterations, loss of proteostasis, deregulated nutrient-sensing, mitochondrial dysfunction, cellular senescence, stem cell exhaustion, and altered intercellular communication. (3) Each of these hallmarks are worthy of deeper examination, because while all of them appear to be aspects of aging, they are all susceptible to acceleration by stress factors. Genomic instability develops with apparently random DNA duplication errors, but can also be aggravated by ROS (reactive oxygen species), which stress magnifies. Typically, systemic inflammation increases with age, and this leads to many diseases attributed to age, but systemic inflammation is also greatly promoted by stress. Conversely, reducing overall stress reduces inflammation, resulting in lowered cellular and organ damage. Even telomere shortening, which is often considered a factor of aging that nothing can prevent, is lessened by telomerase, which chronic stress lowers.
When a cause and effect situation occurs, changing the cause will change the effect. Aging, lifespan, and longevity are products of both time and stress. Time is not within our control, and we don’t have any 150 year old people living because living the best possible life won’t overcome the wear and tear of that much time. However, stress is significantly within our control. You might doubt this — how can you simply erase stress? Economic hardship makes an excellent study target, because it tends to impact most people the same way: we need money to live in today’s society, and if there isn’t enough to live decently, it is stressful. But at its core, stress isn’t external — it’s all about internal perception. If you perceive something as stressful, then it is stressful to you. Much of your mental stress is coming from subconscious thoughts, and there are therapy techniques to turn that around. You don’t have to be a victim of stress.
Never give up, never surrender
Finally, if you have been living with stress for many years, is too much damage done? Is it too late? Well, according to a study published in Cell Metabolism, biological aging caused by stress is quite reversible following recovery from stress. (4) In an animal experiment where the researchers surgically connected the circulatory systems of an old animal with a young one (called heterochronic parabiosis), they were able to cause age like/stress like organ deterioration in the young animal. After disconnecting them, the young animal exhibited a recovery at a rate similar to the previous decline. This showed that, given good conditions, the biological aging symptoms could reverse, not merely halt.
If you are young and want to stay that way longer, keep your stress down and live a good lifestyle. If you are older, don’t despair — you may be able to feel years younger and unwind what stress has done to you. Even in older age, your body is still very adaptable.
Dr. Nemec’s Review
Let’s look deeper at the Psychosomatic Medicine article about financial stress causing kidney damage. Of the major detoxification organs, the kidney is the most susceptible to chemicals and toxins.
Let’s look at this in a few different ways:
1. Because someone doesn’t have much money they might buy lower quality, higher calorie food that is more inflammatory to the body. This is still no excuse because vegetables don’t cost much — plants that should be the staple of your diet are not financially taxing. The problem is you usually eat the way you’ve been trained. So you grow up eating bread and pasta, potatoes and rice, meat, chicken, potatoes, eggs, and dairy products. This food is inflammatory and stresses the body long-term. On the other hand if 80% of your diet was plant based, especially greens, salads, green leafy vegetables, and fresh herbs, you would’ve countered the inflammation cost of the other 20%. Unfortunately, most Americans get in the habit of eating high caloric foods that are low quality, and carbohydrates are addictive, especially cooked processed ones.
2. Mental-emotional toxins are much worse than physical toxins in the long run. Mental-emotional stress sends stress molecules, stress messages from the brain to all the other hundred trillion cells in the body. These stress molecules and messages ramp up the cells for a fight. They produce more inflammatory molecules because they’re ready to run and they are ready to fight, but you can’t run and fight indefinitely. You eventually burn out — or we can say, burn up. Just speculating on lower income stress causing kidney and other organ gland disease, it would make sense that the stress of an unsafe environment for one’s self and for one’s family would cause more damage and likely be more of what’s causing the kidney function decrease.
— Stress of the mind causes inflammation in the body —
It is very important to understand this. This is a major key in health and disease.
This is 24x7x365 in low income areas. There is much more violence, much more gang activity, much more fear. This stress of never feeling safe for yourself or your family is even higher than the stress of poor diet because this stress comes from the mind, both subconscious and conscious, and it never shuts off. So the stress messages are going to the hundred trillion cell community, continually causing them to fight and run, and they eventually just burn out and burn up. This is the most common cause of inflammation in the body — mental emotional stress — which is based on preconceived perceptions earlier in life.
Win the lotto
Some people say if I just had more money, my stress would go away. Not so: for most people who win the lottery, their life is destroyed by the stress of trying to handle all the money. So you see, money is not the answer to everything, but there is an answer to everything — an answer that changes the entire picture of how stress is seen.
Change your perception
When you change your perception, you change your reality. It’s as simple as that. And it is as complex as that. How do you change your perception?
We could spend months covering that topic, but the brief synopsis is this:
1. Most perceptions were formed in early childhood, ages 0 to 6, and these perceptions were written on the hard drive of your brain by your subconscious mind. This means they were programmed into your nervous system for an automatic response and you do not remember them. They are below consciousness.
2. The rest of your perceptions for the most part were developed ages 6 to 12 and these were stored in your conscious mind. This means you do remember them and they were written on the hard drive of your brain, meaning they are programmed into your nervous system for automatic response.
These perceptions for the most part run your life and run your stress response mechanism. So the only true way to be anti-inflammatory and anti-stressed is to change these perceptions.
The key to health, longevity and thriving when you’re 105
It’s all in your mind — or we could say it’s all in your subconscious and conscious mind. All you have to do is change your perceptions, but this is more easily said than done. This is what we have focused on for the last 40 years at Revolution New Medicine.
- First, we have to find the underlying imbalance that is stored on the hard drive of your brain.
- Next, we have to find out the area of your brain that is affected and where it goes to in your body to see what organ function is being controlled by it.
- Next, we have to have a program to release that false programming or to let it go!
- Then you need to reprogram with truth and true identity.
- Finally, we need to verify the change with imaging and tests.
What’s the first step in changing your perception? It is knowing the truth!
And in knowing the truth, the truth will set you free, free from false perception, free from all the lies, and free from the stress of false perception.
Here are the ways we can help you in your health journey:
- Outpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-has the most benefit of teaching, treatment, live classes and personalized coaching. This program has the most contact with Dr. Nemec with 3- 6 month programs that can be turned into a regular checking and support program for life. This is our core program that has helped so many restore their health and maintain that restoration for years.
- Inpatient Comprehensive Teaching and Treatment Program-is our four-week intensive inpatient program for those that are not in driving distance, usually over 4 hour drive. This is the program that is an intensive jumpstart with treatment, teaching, live classes and coaching designed for all our international patients along with those in the US that do not live in Illinois. This program is very effective especially when combined with our new membership program support.
- Stay at Home Program-is offered to continental US patients who cannot come to Revolution New Medicine but still want a more personal, customized plan to restore their health. This program also includes our Learn Membership Program.
- Membership Program is our newest program offered for those that want to work on their health at a high level and want access to the teaching at Revolution New Medicine along with the Forums: both Dr. Nemec’s posts and other members posting. And also, to have the chance to get personalized questions answered on the conference calls which are all archived in case you miss the call. The Membership Program has 3 levels to choose from: Learn, Overcome and Master. The difference is at the Overcome and Master levels you received one on one calls with Dr. Nemec personalizing your program for your areas of focus.
(1) Liu L, Wen W, Shrubsole MJ, Lipworth LE, Mumma MT, Ackerly BA, Shu XO, Blot WJ, Zheng W. Impacts of Poverty and Lifestyles on Mortality: A Cohort Study in Predominantly Low-Income Americans. Am J Prev Med. 2024 Jul;67(1):15-23. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2024.02.015. Epub 2024 Feb 27. PMID: 38417593; PMCID: PMC11312224. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38417593/
(2) Surachman A, Harhay M, Santos AR, Daw J, Alexander LM, Almeida DM, Coe CL. Financial Hardship and Age-Related Decrements in Kidney Function Among Black and White Adults in the Midlife in the United States Study. Psychosom Med. 2024 Jun 1;86(5):431-442. doi: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000001263. Epub 2023 Nov 10. PMID: 37982543; PMCID: PMC11082066. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37982543/
(3) López-Otín C, Blasco MA, Partridge L, Serrano M, Kroemer G. The hallmarks of aging. Cell. 2013 Jun 6;153(6):1194-217. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2013.05.039. PMID: 23746838; PMCID: PMC3836174. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3836174/
(4) Poganik, Jesse R. et al., Biological age is increased by stress and restored upon recovery, Cell Metabolism, May 02, 2023, Volume 35, Issue 5, 807 – 820.e5, https://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/fulltext/S1550-4131(23)00093-1
