Regular discrimination can certainly take a toll on your relationships, job prospects, and mental health, and growing evidence suggests that it also has implications for your physical health. In fact, a recent study found that individuals who report high rates of discrimination tend to have higher levels of some inflammatory markers in their blood as well as higher levels of specific bacteria in their microbiome. These differences, in turn, might put them at higher risk for inflammatory diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, among others.

“White, black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Asian-American people were included in the study. A significant number from each group landed in the high discrimination category; for white participants, high discrimination was usually due to age or gender discrimination, rather than race.”“The blood tests, however, revealed some important differences. Black participants in the high discrimination group had the highest levels of PTGS1, an enzyme, and Hispanic participants had the highest levels of IL-1B, an inflammatory protein. PTGS1 plays a role in creating more prostaglandins, hormone-like substances that the body produces “in response to injury or infection and are major drivers of inflammation,” the authors explained. “Similarly, IL-1B is a pro-inflammatory cytokine that has been implicated in pain, inflammation, and autoimmune conditions.”Meanwhile, the microbiome analyses revealed that levels of a bacterium called P. copri were highest in Black and Hispanic/Latinx individuals who had faced high levels of discrimination. “P. copri is considered highly inflammatory and has been found in rheumatoid arthritis and hepatic fibrosis,” the researched noted.The authors concluded that their findings “suggest that discrimination may lead to a chronic state of inflammation, especially in Black individuals and Hispanics” and that this data, though preliminary, provides “a framework for understanding how unfair treatment is perceived and processed in the brain, and how these are in turn related to inflammation, gut microbiome, and psychological symptoms.”