By Lisa Rapaport (Reuters Health) – Feeling like the target of discrimination may increase a person’s odds of harmful behaviors like smoking, eating fatty foods and getting less sleep, a study of African-Americans suggests. Researchers examined the connection between discrimination and these unhealthy habits among almost 5,000 African-American residents of the Jackson, Mississippi metropolitan area. “We conducted this particular analysis to understand the extent to which multiple measures of perceived discrimination were associated with types of behaviors that are known to be risk factors for cardiovascular disease in African-Americans,” lead study author Mario Sims, a researcher with the Jackson Heart Study and the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, said by email.