What Is Happening to Your Body — and How to Protect Yourself Right Now
By Denise Tureaud | Black Source Media Health & Wellness
- The political shift happening in this country is not just a news story. For Black women, it is a direct health threat — and your body is already responding whether you realize it or not.
- Medicaid cuts, DEI rollbacks, maternal health funding reductions, and ACA premium increases are landing hardest on Black women and their families.
- Chronic political stress is raising cortisol levels, disrupting sleep, elevating blood pressure, and accelerating the health disparities Black women already face.
- You cannot control what happens in Washington or Baton Rouge. But you can control how you prepare, protect yourself, and show up for your community. This article tells you how.
I want to have an honest conversation with you today. Not the kind that makes you feel helpless — but the kind that helps you see clearly, breathe deeply, and make a plan. Because what is happening in this country right now is real, and Black women are carrying more of its weight than almost anyone else.
I know you feel it. Maybe you cannot name exactly what it is. Maybe it shows up as a tension in your shoulders that does not go away. Maybe it is the way you wake up at 3 a.m. with your mind already running. Maybe it is the fatigue that coffee cannot fix, or the irritability that surprises you, or the sense that you are holding everything together for everyone else while something inside you is quietly fraying.
That is not weakness. That is your body responding to a genuine threat. And as your health and wellness sister, I need you to understand both parts of that sentence — the threat is real, and your body’s response to it is real. Understanding both is how we take care of ourselves through this.
- More than 300,000 Black women left the workforce in the first half of 2025, and the Black unemployment rate hit 7.5% in 2026 — the highest since 2021.
- H.R. 1 — the One Big Beautiful Bill — made the largest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history. Black Americans make up over 20% of Medicaid recipients.
- ACA marketplace premiums have doubled for many enrollees since enhanced subsidies expired at the end of 2025. More than one-third of Black marketplace enrollees previously received financial assistance that has been drastically reduced.
- Postpartum Medicaid coverage extensions — which directly protected Black mothers — were eliminated through executive action.
- DEI bans have disrupted race-based health data collection, making it harder to track and address health disparities affecting Black women.
- Chronic political stress produces measurable physical harm: elevated cortisol, high blood pressure, disrupted sleep, weakened immunity, and accelerated cardiovascular risk.
- Preparation, community, and intentional self-care are the most powerful tools Black women have right now — and this article gives you a concrete plan.
What Is Actually Changing — and Why It Falls on Us
Let me tell you what is happening in plain language, because you deserve to know the facts without having to wade through policy documents.
In July 2025, the federal government passed H.R. 1 — officially called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. It made the largest cuts to Medicaid in the program’s history. Black Americans make up over 20% of Medicaid recipients — which means Black women, Black children, Black elders, and Black families are at the center of those cuts. The bill also added work requirements for Medicaid recipients ages 19 to 64, creating new barriers for people whose jobs are unpredictable, seasonal, or caregiving-based — which describes the work lives of many Black women in Louisiana and across the South.
At the same time, the ACA’s enhanced tax premium credits were not extended past December 31, 2025. As a result, average out-of-pocket insurance premiums doubled for millions of enrollees beginning in January 2026, and financial assistance was drastically reduced. More than one-third of Black people with marketplace coverage had received financial assistance to purchase insurance. Many of those people are now paying double — or going without coverage entirely.
For Black mothers specifically, the repeal of Executive Order 14070 eliminated options for states to extend postpartum Medicaid coverage. That coverage protected Black women during the most medically vulnerable period after childbirth — the time when Black maternal mortality is highest. Despite attempts to suppress maternal health data, Black and Native American birthing people still have higher rates of maternal morbidity and mortality compared to white women. And now the data collection that helped us understand and address those disparities is being restricted through DEI bans.
In the workforce, more than 300,000 Black women left the workforce in the first half of 2025, and the Black unemployment rate reached 7.5% in 2026 — the highest level since October 2021. DEI programs that created pathways and protections for Black women in corporate America have been dismantled. The safety nets are thinner. The pathways are narrower. And Black women are being asked to carry more with less support than they had even two years ago.
I am not telling you this to scare you. I am telling you because you cannot protect yourself from something you do not understand. And once you understand it, you can act.
What This Political Stress Is Doing to Your Body
Here is what your doctor may not have told you directly: political stress is a medical issue. Not a metaphor. Not an exaggeration. A documented, measurable, physical health reality.
When your nervous system detects a threat — and a government cutting your healthcare while eliminating the programs that protected your job and your body is a threat — it triggers your stress response. Cortisol and adrenaline flood your system. Your heart rate increases. Your blood pressure rises. Your immune system shifts into a different mode. Your digestive system slows. Your sleep architecture changes.
That response is designed for short-term survival. The problem is that when the threat does not go away — when the news cycle brings a new assault every week, when the policy changes keep coming, when you are watching everything your community fought for get dismantled piece by piece — your body stays in that activated state. And chronic activation of the stress response produces serious physical harm.
Elevated cortisol over extended periods contributes to hypertension, which Black women already experience at higher rates than any other group of women in America. It disrupts sleep, which affects everything from immune function to emotional regulation to metabolic health. It increases inflammation throughout the body, which is connected to cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and autoimmune conditions — all of which disproportionately affect Black women. Moreover, it accelerates the weathering process — the biological aging of the body under sustained stress — that researchers have documented specifically in Black women who carry the dual burden of racism and gender discrimination.
You are not imagining the exhaustion. You are not being dramatic about the tension. Your body is responding to real conditions with a real biological response. The question is what we do about it.
The Armor We Wear Is Also Hurting Us
I want to say something that might be hard to hear. The strength that Black women are celebrated for — the ability to absorb, endure, keep going, hold everyone else up — is also one of our greatest health risks right now.
We have been conditioned to carry pain silently. To process grief quickly and get back to work. To put everyone else’s needs first and file our own somewhere down the list. In normal times, that strength is remarkable. In times like these — when the political environment is actively threatening our health, our children’s healthcare, our economic stability, and our reproductive rights — that same armor can prevent us from getting the help we need before the damage becomes serious.
Furthermore, many Black women are carrying not just their own stress but the stress of their entire households. You are monitoring the policy changes so your mother understands what is happening to her Medicaid. You are figuring out how to cover the insurance premium that doubled in January. You are holding space for your children’s anxiety about a world that feels less safe. You are doing all of this while managing your own fear, your own grief, and your own uncertainty.
That is too much for one body. And your body knows it, even when your mind is still pushing through.
What Preparation Looks Like Right Now
Here is where I want to shift from what is happening to what we do about it. Because preparation is the most powerful antidote to helplessness — and helplessness is what chronic stress feeds on.
Know your healthcare status before a crisis forces you to find out. If you or anyone in your household receives Medicaid, find out right now whether the new work requirements affect your coverage. Contact your state Medicaid office or a local health navigator. Do not wait until you go to the pharmacy and find out your coverage has lapsed. Get ahead of it.
Find a community health center near you. Federally Qualified Health Centers serve patients regardless of ability to pay and are required to provide care on a sliding fee scale. In New Orleans and across Louisiana, these centers exist specifically for moments like this one. Know where yours is before you need it urgently.
Get your preventive screenings done now. Mammograms. Cervical cancer screenings. Blood pressure checks. Diabetes screening. Do not postpone these because the system feels uncertain. Do them now while you have whatever coverage you currently have. Early detection saves lives — and the political environment makes that truth more urgent, not less.
Build or strengthen your community of care. Identify three people in your life you can call when you are struggling — not to fix anything, but to witness you. One person who makes you laugh. One person who prays with you or grounds you spiritually. One person who will hold you accountable to taking care of yourself. These relationships are not luxuries. They are biological medicine. Social connection is one of the most powerful buffers against the physical damage of chronic stress.
Protect your nervous system deliberately and daily. Not once a week when you have time. Every day. Ten minutes of stillness in the morning before you look at your phone. A walk outside. Music that moves something in you. Time without news, without notifications, without the weight of what is happening in Washington. Your nervous system needs regular windows of safety to regulate and recover. Without them, it stays activated — and chronic activation has a cumulative cost.
The Spiritual and Mental Health Piece
I want to talk about mental health directly, because Black women in particular often seek support through faith and community rather than clinical mental health services — and both paths are valid. However, this moment may require more than either one alone.
If you are experiencing persistent anxiety, sleep disruption, emotional numbness, or a sense of dread that does not lift, please consider speaking with a therapist or counselor — ideally one who understands the specific experience of Black women navigating racial and political stress. The Therapy for Black Girls directory at therapyforblackgirls.com is a strong starting point. Many therapists on that platform offer sliding scale fees.
Your faith is a genuine source of strength. Additionally, your community is one of the most powerful protective factors research has identified for Black women’s mental health. Both of those things can be true while also being true that a trained professional can offer something your pastor and your sister cannot — a clinical space where your symptoms are assessed and addressed with the seriousness they deserve.
You do not have to be in crisis to deserve support. You just have to be human. And in 2026, being a Black woman in America is enough reason to make sure someone qualified is in your corner.
This Is Also a Call to Stay Engaged
I want to close with something that might surprise you in a health and wellness column. Civic engagement is a health intervention.
Research consistently shows that people who feel a sense of agency — who believe their actions can influence their circumstances — experience less chronic stress than people who feel powerless. Helplessness is not just an emotion. It is a physiological state that accelerates the damage chronic stress produces.
Every time you vote, you are doing something for your health. Every time you show up to a school board meeting or a city council hearing, you are doing something for your health. Every time you talk to your neighbor about what is happening and why it matters, you are building the kind of community connection that literally extends life expectancy.
The political changes bearing down on Black women right now are real. They are serious. And they are not going away on their own. But you are not powerless against them. You are informed, you are connected, and you are part of a community that has survived worse — not by going numb to the threat, but by meeting it with both courage and care.
Take care of your body. Protect your mind. Know your rights and your resources. Stay in community with women who see you and hold you. And do not stop showing up — for yourself, for your children, and for each other.
You are worth the fight. All of it.
Denise Tureaud is Black Source Media’s Health & Wellness contributor, writing every Wednesday for the Black community with a focus on self-improvement, personal resilience, and whole-person health. A New Orleans native, Denise believes that community health begins with honest conversation and ends with action.
- Congressional Black Caucus Foundation — “Five Key Policy Issues for Black Americans in 2026,” February 2026. cbcfinc.org
- The Century Foundation — “State Actions to Protect Black Maternal Health,” October 2025. tcf.org
- National Partnership for Women & Families — “The Administration Has Weaponized DEI to the Detriment of Black Moms,” April 2025. nationalpartnership.org
- Black Women’s Health Imperative — “Major Healthcare Shifts Ahead,” 2025. bwhi.org
- Commonwealth Fund — 2026 State Health Disparities Report, April 2026. commonwealthfund.org
- KFF — “Medicaid: What to Watch in 2026,” January 2026. kff.org
- Therapy for Black Girls directory — therapyforblackgirls.com
Denise Tureaud
Health Writer • Wellness Advocate • New Orleans Community Voice • Wednesday Columnist
Denise Tureaud is Black Source Media’s Wednesday health and wellness columnist, writing for and about the Black women, men, and families of New Orleans with the directness and specificity that community deserves. She does not traffic in generic wellness advice. She writes about the real conditions — financial stress, insurance discrimination, systemic health disparities — that shape Black health outcomes in Louisiana and across America.
Her Wednesday series covers the intersection of personal health and systemic reality. She translates peer-reviewed research into actionable, plain-language guidance for readers who have been underserved by both the healthcare system and the health media that claims to speak for them. Her work on financial stress and cardiovascular disease brought new NIH-backed research directly to Black Source Media readers months before it reached mainstream health publications.
Tureaud writes with the voice of a New Orleans Black woman who has seen too many people she loves suffer from conditions that were preventable — and who believes that information, delivered honestly and directly, is one of the most powerful health interventions available.
Selected Articles by Denise Tureaud
Your Bills Are Breaking Your Heart. Literally.
Black Men Health Disparities: Why We Die Younger and What We Can Do About It (Strong Enough to Live Series)
View All Articles by Denise Tureaud at Black Source Media
Health & Wellness Columnist — Black Source Media
Denise Tureaud
Health Writer • Wellness Advocate • New Orleans Community Voice • Wednesday Columnist
Denise Tureaud is Black Source Media’s Wednesday health and wellness columnist, writing for and about the Black women, men, and families of New Orleans with the directness and specificity that community deserves. She does not traffic in generic wellness advice. She writes about the real conditions — financial stress, insurance discrimination, systemic health disparities — that shape Black health outcomes in Louisiana and across America.
Her Wednesday series covers the intersection of personal health and systemic reality. She translates peer-reviewed research into actionable, plain-language guidance for readers who have been underserved by both the healthcare system and the health media that claims to speak for them. Her work on financial stress and cardiovascular disease brought new NIH-backed research directly to Black Source Media readers months before it reached mainstream health publications.
Tureaud writes with the voice of a New Orleans Black woman who has seen too many people she loves suffer from conditions that were preventable — and who believes that information, delivered honestly and directly, is one of the most powerful health interventions available.
Selected Articles by Denise Tureaud
Your Bills Are Breaking Your Heart. Literally.
Black Men Health Disparities: Why We Die Younger and What We Can Do About It (Strong Enough to Live Series)
View All Articles by Denise Tureaud at Black Source Media