I’m no scientist, but this sounds like pretty bad science to me. According to a new study, women who report experiencing discrimination more are more likely to have hardened arteries:

This research, which used a subset of the Study of Women’s Health Across the Nation (SWAN) Heart study, examined the relationship between chronic exposure to discrimination and subclinical outcomes such as coronary artery calcification. Such calcification is believed to be a measure of overall atherosclerotic plaque burden, with some studies finding that arterial calcification is predictive of clinical events such as heart attack.
The study included 181 African-American women, ages 45 to 58, from the Chicago, and Pittsburgh, Pa., areas. The women answered a nine-item Everyday Discrimination Questionnaire regarding their experience of discrimination and the results were averaged over a four-year period. Coronary artery calcification was measured on the fourth year through electron beam computed tomography.
The questionnaire measured subtle rather than overt discrimination on a scale of one to four, with four points being the highest.
Discrimination was measured by things such as feeling ignored or treated with a lack of courtesy or respect, she said. “The women reported discrimination in the form of having poorer service in stores or restaurants, being treated as if they were less smart or being treated as if they were dishonest.”

Me: This just smells bogus to me. I’m not saying there isn’t real discrimination out there, but isn’t it possible that women who tend to feel discriminated against and let it bother them are going to be the kind of women who are going to feel more stressed generally? And isn’t stress bad for you? My understanding was that people in foul moods who constantly find fault with the world as they find it were likely to have worse health than people who knew how to relax and go with the flow. This doesn’t mean people should ignore bigotry for the sake of their health, but it seems to me this study is counting angry people and then identifying a single cause for their anger. It would be interesting to know if they asked subjects about some non-racial grievances as well. Like: how often do you get parking tickets unfairly?

It’d also be nice to know how this plays out over time. Discrimination has indisputably gone down over the last century. Was there a corresponding drop in heart disease? Etc.

Anyway, something tells me this study will be celebrated by trial lawyers.