Biological Factors

When explaining health outcomes, it is important to break down the components of health based on individual factors and also consider how culture influences each factor. A person’s psychological, social, and biological factors play a fundamental role in shaping the individual self-concept regarding the broad definition of health, how healthy a person is, and how diseases mentally and physically develop.

Psychological factors play an important role in the development of diseases. For instance, high levels of chronic stress are correlated with respiratory infections, cardiovascular diseases, HIV/AIDS, and impaired wound healing Miller et al. (2009). If the individual has a strong protective factor against stress and knows how to manage his/her

This decrease affects the psychological side of the individual, and therefore links to the biological part. Recent findings suggest that changes in the glucocorticoid receptor associated with isolation result in weakened physiological control of inflammation by the HPA axis Miller et al. (2009). Moreover, stressful social relationships have been found to increase the probability of getting infections by altering the Sympathetic Nervous System. Also, socioeconomic status has been implied in the release of cortisol, epinephrine, and in increased concentrations of inflammatory biomarkers Miller et al. (2009). Individuals with lower socioeconomic status are exposed to more stressful situations. This leads to a higher probability of developing chronic stress, which affects the biological process involved in the release of greater amounts of cortisol. Individuals from lower SES have lower probabilities of accessing good health care, which not only causes stress, but also decreases the chances of the person getting treatment when needed. Another fundamental individual actor includes the early social experiences of each individual and how these affect their biological health. Studies have shown that children from low SES interpret ambiguous situations as more threatening than children

Individual differences regarding health and how symptoms are perceived and interpreted depend on the person’s cultural background, race, and ethnicity (Yale and Revenson, 2003). Culture and ethnicity may influence how a person feels and thinks about disease. For instance, his/her view of well-being depends on his/her individual background. In Western medicine, health is defined as the absence of physical or biological diseases (Health Psychology, 2013); so, a person from a Western background may measure his/her health status based on that definition. Furthermore, his/her understanding about health, how illnesses develop, and how they can be treated would be based on Western medical explanations. On the other hand, a person that follows a Traditional Chinese Medicine approach to health may focus more on his/her spiritual side and focus on how that influences the biological development of disease. In addition, for him or her, the body is treated as a whole that needs to maintain its healthy balance (Health Psychology, 2013). Defining health and how diseases must be approached broadly by taking into account many individual variables. What is fundamental to keep in mind is that knowing how to control psychological and social thresholds are the first steps in achieving