I wonder how much of it actually boils down to chronically high cortisol levels. People that perceive stress as harmfull are more prone to its damage and we know that positive thoughts and meditation can negate that effect to some degree or even produce benefits.
Knowing that effect exists is one thing, but how do we protect ourselves ?
In chronic making of cortisol adrenal gland becomes deficient in Vitamin C which is used in the process [1]. This has direct effect on immunity (all animals produce more vitmin C in stresfull times to protect from it). Chronic insufficiency will not lead to scurvy (you only need tiny amount of C to prevent that) but will produce ill health particularly combined with smoking and bad eating habits which is typical for lower socioeconomic class (talking about it, blacks, the most affected, are regularly deficient in vitamin D too, another potent immunity booster).
The effect is multifactorial from that point - for example Vitamin C insufficiency changes cholesterol transformation to bile acids which leads to high cholesterol levels [2] which can provide some explanation for cardiovascular events.
Insufficiency is the level that will not result in terminal disease but in suboptimal health and shorter lifespan (i.e. RDA sux) because body will start to utilize triage [3].
Hence, I suggest everybody to forget about 60mg bullshit and use couple of grams of Vitamin C as few daily doses to protect from John Henryism effect. Afterall, that is what our closest relatives who have the same disfunctinal GULO gene - primates - do: they eat grams of C in the wild.
[1] http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/86/1/145.long