Fill in the gaps with the words from the box. Each word is used only once. You may need to change the word in order for it to fit the context. There are 2 extra words in the box.
Status and Stress
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LIKE – POTENT – ADULT – PLEASANT – BENEFIT – SETTLE
HARDSHIP – SUFFER – DECADE – SOCIETY – PRONE – CHILD
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Although professionals may bemoan their long work hours and high-pressure careers, really, there’s stress, and then there’s Stress with a capital “S.” The former can be considered a manageable if part of life; in the right amount, it may even strengthen one’s mettle. The latter kills.
What’s the difference? Scientists on an oddly subjective explanation: the more helpless one feels when facing a given stressor, they argue, the more toxic that stressor’s effects.
That sense of control tends to decline as one descends the socioeconomic ladder, with grave consequences. Those on the bottom are more than three times as likely to die prematurely as those at the top. They’re also more likely from depression, heart disease and diabetes. Perhaps most devastating, the stress of poverty early in life can have consequences that last into .
Even those who later ascend economically may show persistent effects of early-life . Scientists find them more to illness than those who were never poor. But the effects of early-life stress also seem to linger, unfavorably molding our nervous systems and possibly even accelerating the rate at which we age.
Even those who become rich are more to be ill if they suffered hardship early on.
The British epidemiologist Michael Marmot calls the phenomenon “status syndrome.” He’s studied officers who work in a rigid hierarchy for , and found that smoking, diet and access to health care are not the only factors. There’s a direct relationship among health, well-being and one’s place in the greater scheme. “The higher you are in the hierarchy,” he says, “the better your health.”
