Structural Racism Drives Racial Health Disparities...
Today, many communities that were subject to redlining are hotter than non-redlined communities, in part because of a dearth of green space and a plethora of human-made pollutants and hazardous materials, such as asphalt, that create an urban heat-island effect. Heat has implications for exposure to ground-level ozone, which is generated from a chemical reaction of air pollutants with heat and sunlight. Climate change, as a quintessential threat multiplier, is definitively increasing the intensity and frequency of extreme heat — as outlined in the latest report from the International Panel on Climate Change — with some observed heat events extremely unlikely to have occurred without it. Pollen levels in most major cities have been high in 2023, and climate change is intensifying pollen seasons, with implications for pediatric ED visits due to asthma.
Clearly epigenetics has been implicated as a mechanism linking early environmental exposures and nutritional status to disease risks later in life, yet studies claiming epigenetics as a mechanism often fail to follow individuals with well-characterized exposures beyond birth outcomes. Dr Laila Africa and Dr Frances Cress Welsing pointed out that the glaciated soil of Europe giving the populations food with poor nutritional value may not only have caused physical detriment to European genomes over thousands of years but also genetic detriment affecting their difficulty maintaining birth rates, and their subconscious need to retain melanin. This need may have been the causal factor for the consumption of the remains of Egyptian mummified black people as a health additive called Mumia in Western Europe.
The practice of consuming parts of ancient Egyptian mummies—and, later, embalmed corpses of all kinds of African—began in the 11th century. Despite a ban on the export of antiquities, Europeans continued seeking out mummies both to satisfy their curiosity and provide components for medical remedies. It wasn't until the late 19th century that the practice of consuming mumia (African mummified remains mixed into tea finally died off. Antwerp a city in Belgium is world renown for its chocolate hands depicting the severed hands that colonizers chopped off Congo enslaved children who were unable to keep up with work quotas children in Belgium are taught this is a symbol of good conquering evil. The evil black people who refused to work hard unto death for their white oppressors. We see this example of cannibalism of black people by proxy or effigy in many so-called civilized nations.
White cannibalism was widely reported in accounts of enslaved Africans from the 16th century up through the 19th. In fact their are accounts of slavers cooking weaker captives even children to feed to those still surviving when supplies would dwindle so as not to lose profits. In terms of written legal accounts and court documentation other than the case of the Arrogante, there is only one other recorded example in which European slave traders practiced coerced cannibalism by forcing their captives to eat the soup from the heart and liver of one of the slaves, who had rebelled (by refusing to let them kill him) against the master and crew who also partook of the grisly food.
This type of justification including the castration of Black men and trophy keeping of body parts most notably black penises as a cultural norm that occurred frequently in the early 20th century in the USA is explained in depth in the "Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy)," written in 1970 by Washington psychiatrist Frances Cress Welsing. Welsing holds that "the quality of whiteness is (as related to the potential for genetic annihilation due to recessive nature of white genes requiring continual homogeneity in an increasingly smaller and smaller gene pool) a genetic inadequacy or a relative genetic deficiency state or disease based upon the genetic inability to produce the skin pigments of melanin which are responsible for all skin coloration." Not to mention the decreased physical resistance to climate and genetic disease in populations without eumelanin.
Epigenetic mechanisms directly regulate skin homeostasis and regeneration, but they also mark cell senescence and the natural and pathological aging processes. In short things other than genetics can affect your melanin content including nutrition and sunlight. Epigenetic factors play important roles in centromeric chromatin assembly and maintenance. Non-disjunction of the supernumerary B chromosome centromere is independent of centromere function, but centromere pairing during early prophase of meiosis I requires an active centromere.(Translation Epigenetics can cause a lowering of birth rates). Epigenetics plays an essential role in the embryo because it determines the genes that will be expressed and at what point during development this will happen. All the cells in an embryo have the same genetic information passed on from the parents including infertility and infant mortality rates.
African Americans disproportionately suffer more severe and debilitating morbidity from chronic pain than do non-Hispanic Whites. These differences may arise from differential exposure to psychosocial and environmental factors such as adverse childhood experiences, racial discrimination, low socioeconomic status, and depression, all of which have been associated with chronic stress and chronic pain. Race, as a social construct, makes it such that African Americans are more likely to experience different early life conditions, which may induce epigenetic changes that sustain racial differences in chronic pain. Epigenetics is one mechanism by which environmental factors such as childhood stress, racial discrimination, economic hardship, and depression can affect gene expression without altering the underlying genetic sequence.
Currently in Latin America the field of epigenetics appears on the scene with a worrisome colonial shadow. It reintroduces long forgotten exclusionary and stereotypic perspectives on indigenous and mestizos, and biologizes as well as racializes social-cultural differences among human groups. By changing diets to represent European norms the health of many people suffers as it leans towards red meats , starches and processed sugars or cheap grains with little nutritional value.
All current enlightened nutritionists are following the lead of Dr Sebi a Honduran educator who discovered the truth of the detrimental nature of the modern diet and the scientific value of traditional African diets rich in living or "Electric foods". Sebi believed that mucus and acidity caused disease. He held that eating certain foods and avoiding others could detoxify the body, achieving an alkaline state that could reduce the risk and effects of disease. Most of his ideas and theories are now supported by scientific research which blossomed following his death as Doctors came out of the woodwork trying to claim his research conclusions as their own.
The popular term for African-American cooking is “soul food.” Many of these foods are rich in nutrients, as found in collard greens and other leafy green and yellow vegetables, legumes, beans, rice, and potatoes. Currently African American nutritionists are seeing the value in replacing those parts of the diet, which are low in fiber, calcium, potassium, and high in fat with healthy alternatives that still have the flavors and nutritional values of Soul Food!
NOTE: A therapy to increase white fertility by injecting Melanotan II is currently being pushed on the black market. Melanotan causes pigment cells to produce more melanin and that's what gives you your darkened skin.” If injected or used as a nasal spray, Melanotan-II can cause dramatic skin darkening in just days. The drug can also suppress appetite and lead to weight loss, greater muscle mass and harder bones another effect that some users find desirable.
Melanotan II replicates hormones that already exist in your body making Caucasians appear to be of African descent. And while that might sound harmless enough, Melanotan II is actually so risky to destabilizing the systems of white supremacy that it's illegal to sell it in all 50 U.S. states, as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia. Melanotan II is a synthetic cyclic heptapeptide used to prevent a sunlight-induced skin cancer by stimulating the skin tanning process. It may become even more costly as skin cancer rates continue to rise across the globe due to climate change. Australia has the highest overall rate of melanoma of skin , followed by New Zealand the UK, Nordic countries of the EU (Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark), and The USA.
Melanotan II comes in injectable liquid form 2000mcg/mL for five milliliters (5ml) the cost is $250.00 it is $500.00 or 100.00 a milliliter on the Black market! (In 2024 one gram of natural melanin is worth about $750, which. makes it more valuable than diamonds. platinum, or gold.) Melanotan is artificial and temporary. It also causes nausea, stomach cramps, decreased appetite, flushing, tiredness, yawning, darkened skin, spontaneous erections of the penis, and other side effects.
Environmental racism and climate change are complex, interconnected, system-level challenges. For busy health professionals, it may seem overwhelming to consider tackling challenges that often seem peripheral to clinical practice. Yet they directly and indirectly contribute to individual-level health harms, even if we are not currently diagnosing them. They threaten the very mission of the medical community — to equitably prevent harm, improve health, and save lives.
Comments