I am an MD candidate in the Yale School of Medicine. Growing up in Venezuela, I saw how disease, poverty and lack of education, instigates a vicious cycle of disease and ignorance and I decided to dedicate my career to helping break this cycle. I graduated from Brandeis University with a triple-major in Neuroscience, Biology, and Health: Science, Society and Policy, and led a number of projects aimed at improving the health and education of communities in Venezuela and the US. I also interned at the International AIDS Society in Switzerland working on a literature review on community-based participatory research in HIV, and subsequently worked at Weill Cornell Medical College studying how electrical activity affects early brain development. Moving forward, I'm particularly interested in exploring how adverse life experiences, including stress and environmental toxins, affects the progress of neurodegenerative diseases.
Hi Denny, While hair cortisol has not been used to examine a political event it has been used in other studies. Hair cortisol has been used as an indicator of stress for the last few years, and has on a few occasions been used to look back at the effects of natural disasters: Luo et al. found increased hair cortisol concentrations in victims of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake when compared to non-exposed individuals. O’Brien et al. found that discrimination experiences can lead to elevated hair cortisol in healthy young adults. Hope this answers your question. Thank you so much for your support!!
Jul 24, 2017
Assessing stress in migrants and minorities after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election using hair cortisol
Hi Denny, While hair cortisol has not been used to examine a political event it has been used in other studied. Hair cortisol has been used as an indicator of stress for the last few years, and has on a few occasions been used to look back at the effects of natural disasters:
Luo et al. found increased hair cortisol concentrations in victims of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake when compared to non-exposed individuals.
O’Brien et al. found that discrimination experiences can lead to elevated hair cortisol in healthy young adults.
Hope this answers your question. Thank you so much for your support!!
Jul 24, 2017
Assessing stress in migrants and minorities after the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election using hair cortisol