Social context and psychosocial influences on blood pressure among American Samoans

Abstract

This study explores social and explores social and economic influences on health within a model formulated to address explicitly both individual and household level phenomena. Dressler's lifestyle incongruity model is used as a basis from which to predict the effects of intracultural contexts of variability on blood pressure. The sample for this survey consists of 134 Samoan men and women living in American Samoa. Based on previous experience and ethnographic sources, two key intracultural contexts were examined; gender, i.e., male-female differences in response to psychosocial stress, and household employment as indicated by whether or not both spouses in a household are employed. Our analysis indicates that lifestyle incongruity, defined as the difference between the material culture presented by a household and the economic resources of the family, is significantly associated with both systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Furthermore, males and females show opposite blood pressure associations with both lifestyle incongruity (male blood pressure increases with increasing incongruity while female blood pressure does not) and household employment (male blood pressure is higher when both spouses work but female blood pressure is lower).

Implications of market integration for cardiovascular and metabolic health among an indigenous Amazonian Ecuadorian population

“…A bilingual assistant translated for those participants not fluent in Spanish. All participants were asked a series of questions from a modified version of the Material Style of Life (SOL) Index (Bindon et al 1997;Leonard et al 2002). The SOL is simply a list of market items, and SOL scores are the sum of the number of index items a household owns.…”

“…Future research will include 24-hour diet recall measures in order to capture additional quantitative information about the Shuar diet. Third, while standard ethnographic and analytical procedures (Bindon et al 1997;Leonard et al 2002) were implemented to capture lifestyle variations among Shuar, the authors recognize that the SOL measures used in the present study provide an imperfect and limited representation of MI. However, despite these concerns, the present study attempts to identify culturallygrounded indices of material lifestyle differences among Shuar.…”

“…The transition from a subsistence-based lifestyle to a market economy influences myriad dimensions of life (e.g. diet, activity patterns and psychosocial stress) (Friedlaender et al 1987;McGarvey et al 1989;HussAshmore et al 1992;Shephard and Rode 1996;Bindon et al 1997). There is, however, disagreement about whether MI produces overall negative, positive or mixed effects on health (Godoy and Cardenas 2000;McDade and Nyberg 2010).…”

Allostatic load and biological anthropology

“…Thus, we propose ALIs will add a cumulative measure that assesses multiple dimensions of health and well-being to ongoing research on human variation in response to ecological and sociocultural stressors. For over half a century, biological anthropologists have conducted numerous natural experiments designed to explore how evolutionary, environmental, and sociocultural stressors influence human growth and development, health, reproductive function, cause of death, and life span (e.g., Baker, 1984;Baker, Hanna, & Baker, 1986;Bindon, Knight, Dressler, & Crews, 1997;Damon, 1974;Garn, 1963;Goodman & Leatherman, 1998;James, Crews, & Pearson, 1989;Lasker, 1952;Little & Haas, 1989;Roberts, 1960;Ulijaszek & Huss-Ashmore, 1997;Washburn, 1951). Such natural experiments, now commonly known as human adaptability studies (Little, 2010), revealed extensive phenotypic variation both within and across human populations.…”

The Detrimental Effects of Allostasis: Allostatic Load as a Measure of Cumulative Stress

“…AL fits a newly emerging paradigm in anthropology examining individual life history, incorporating epidemiology, and using ecological approaches (e.g., Bindon et al, 1997; Ellison, 2001; Panter-Brick and Worthman, 1999; Ulijaszek and HushAshmore, 1997). Since AL does not examine individual genes, but measures responses to stress, it gives researchers a new tool for exploring individual variation in responses to stress (e.g., Bindon et al, 1997; Brown et al, 1998; Crews, 2003;Crews and Gerber, 1999; Decker, 2000; Goodman and Leatherman, 1999; Harper et al, 2001; James and Brown, 1997;McDade, 2001; Panter-Brick and Worthman, 1999).Allostasis elaborates on homeostasis (Sterling and Eyer, 1988). Homeostasis refers to the processes by which biological organisms maintain their physiological and biochemical functioning.…”