Poor people have a death rate as much as three times higher than that of other groups.
But smoking, drinking, overeating and lack of exercise account, at most, for 13 percent of the gap, researchers concluded in a study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association . This sounds very similar to some earlier work comparing tuberculosis and mortality in whites and blacks. Both of these studies made adjustments to make the comparisons as similar as possible, i.e., socioeconomic levels in the first and risk factors, including smoking and drinking, among others, in the second study. My work suggests that the hormone, DHEA, is necessary for proper growth and development, and, once the adult level is attained, for the proper maintenance of all tissues. This is why men are bigger and stronger than women.