Working Overtime Means 67% Chance To Have A Heart Attack -By 3Jackass

If you're accustomed to being the last one to leave the office, new research may offer you cause to rethink your routine.The study, shows that a combination of stress, raised blood pressure and unhealthy diets stemming from long working hours may be the cause of thousands of workers' serious health problems. It combined the results of different studies over the last 50 years and found that spending too long in the office resulted in a 40 to 80 percent greater chance of heart disease compared to an eight hour work day.

The British researchers looked at just over 7,000 adults between 39 and 62 years old. After 12 years, 29 people had died of heart disease and 163 had suffered from a heart attack. An astounding 67 percent came from the minority (10 percent) that had a history of working long hours. All other factors considered, this group was not at a higher risk for heart problems.

Investigators noted that the risks differed according to how studies were conducted, but they noted that the risk for heart disease was the greatest in studies where participants were asked to recall their working hours. Researchers said that other factors could be increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, poor eating habits and lack of physical activity due to limited leisure time. Middle-aged workers working 55 hours or more a week had poorer brain function than those clocking up no more than 40 hours. Participants who worked longer hours scored lower on tests to measure intelligence, short-term memory and word recall.
"We knew there was an association between working long hours and coronary heart disease, but we were really surprised that it was such a strong predictor," said Mika Kivimaki, professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London and lead author of the study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Currently a person's risk for heart disease is calculated based on age, gender, blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and cigarette smoking. But adding work hours into the mix boosted the risk calculator's predictive value by 4.7 percent. That means that of the 1.2 million Americans who will have a heart attack this year, 56,000 might have a better idea of their risk if doctors asked about their work hours, according to Kivimaki.
"What we cannot say is that the long hours cause coronary heart disease," Kivimaki said. "It could be other things related to working long hours." for example, that people who work long hours exercise less or eat more irregularly. It could also be that workaholics get less sleep and are more stressed. "If you work very long hours for a long time it clearly seems to be associated with an increased risk of sleep problems and depression and other adverse effects that can also affect physical health," Kivimaki said.

"The take home message could be that if a person has to work long hours, it's very important for them to eat healthy food, exercise enough and keep their blood pressure, glucose and cholesterol levels within the healthy limits," Kivimaki said. Analysis of data from 25 studies involving 603,838 men and women from Europe, the USA, and Australia who were followed for an average of 8.5 years, found a 13% increased risk of incident coronary heart disease (a new diagnosis, hospitalisation, or death) in people working 55 hours or more per week compared with those putting in a normal 35 to 40 hour week, even after taking into account risk factors including age, sex, and socioeconomic status.
“Sudden death from overwork is often caused by stroke and is believed to result from a repetitive triggering of the stress response,” they write. “Behavioral mechanisms, such as physical inactivity, might also link long working hours and stroke; a hypothesis supported by evidence of an increased risk of incident stroke in individuals who sit for long periods at work.

Importantly, the researchers found that the longer people worked, the higher their chances of a stroke. For example, compared with people who worked standard hours, those working between 41 and 48 hours had a 10% higher risk of stroke, and those working 49 to 54 hours had a 27% increased risk of stroke. Although the causal mechanisms of these relationships need to be better understood, the authors suggest that increasing health-risk behaviours, such as physical inactivity and high alcohol consumption, as well as repetitive triggering of the stress response, might increase the risk of stroke. The researchers, publishing their findings in the Lancet medical journal, say they cannot state categorically that long hours cause people to have strokes – but their study shows that there is a link, and it gets stronger as the hours people put in get longer.
“Although some countries have legislation for working hours. It is not always implemented. Therefore, that the length of a working day is an important determinant mainly for strokes, but perhaps also for coronary heart disease, is an important finding.”

The research did not look at why long working hours may be associated with higher risk for heart attack and could not establish whether long work hours in itself caused the increased risk or whether it may be caused by unmeasured confounders. For example, long work hours may be associated with stress and disrupted eating, sleeping and exercise opportunities.
Overall, this was a well-conducted study that has highlighted another easily measured risk factor for heart attacks. Further research is now needed to understand why this may be the case, and to validate the model in more diverse populations.