Diet and excerise and watch what you eat. Those diagnosed with high blood pressure, or hypertension, hear this mantra every time they visit the doctor. Unfortunately, that might not be enough for some patients.
African-Americans suffer from hypertension at the highest rates in the nation.
In many predominately black neighborhoods, there’s a lack of access to healthy, nutritious foods. Instead, many blacks survive on high-caloric fast foods. Combined with the long hours residents work, there’s no time to worry about a 3-mile jog.
These residents don’t want to live this way and want information about how to live a healthier lifestyle. However, there’s a lack of proper investment into poverty-stricken communities to combat this lack of knowledge.
Addressing these issues would make a substantial dent in the number of African-Americans suffering from blood pressure. But it may not be enough.
According to a study done by Johns Hopkins researchers, “Black patients who worry or think frequently about race have higher blood pressure than those who don’t.” The study recorded an average five point difference in both diastolic and systolic blood pressures among patients who thought about race and those who didn’t.
Living in a world where “white is right” and “black better get back” can have a detrimental impact on one’s psyche. These effects are especially negative if one also lives in a place where poverty is the norm.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found poverty significantly increases serious psychological distress and “adults with SPD had significantly higher age-adjusted death rates for each of the three leading causes of death.” Worrying about how your melanian count will negatively impact you, along with the other stressors of life, does not make for a happy existence.
The study also found race-conscious whites did not see a rise or a fall in their blood pressure.
This provides further proof that systemic racism is not something that can be best dealt with by “just forgetting about it” or “moving on.” Instead, for African-Americans to live their lives to the fullest, they must see systemic change in their daily lives.
The black community won’t get a good bill of health until they are no longer pandered to by the political class, left behind by the economic progress of white flight and mutilated by a lack of investment by the corporate world into something beside fried chicken stands.
These conditions have risen the blood pressure of black Americans nationwide, and no amount of exercise will be able to fix that — as a casual jog could turn into a warrantless police confrontation.
Garrett Hines is a 21 year-old political science senior from Monroe, Louisiana. You can reach him on Twitter @garrettH_TDR.