- LONDON (Reuters) - Healthy
people with stressful jobs who work long hours but get little satisfaction
from what they do have twice the risk of dying from heart disease as satisfied
employees, according to a study.
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- Job stress has been known to trigger heart problems in
people who already have cardiovascular disease. Now Finnish scientists
have now shown that even in healthy people the pressures of work can take
their toll.
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- "Work stress seems to be an independent predicator
of death for cardiovascular diseases," Mika Kivimaki, of the Finnish
Institute of Occupational Health, told Reuters Friday.
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- Obesity, high blood pressure, lack of exercise, smoking
and being overweight contribute to heart disease -- a leading killer in
many industrialized countries.
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- But Kivimaki and his colleagues, who studied the medical
histories of 812 healthy Finnish men and women in a metal industry company
over 25 years, said job stress also plays an important role. "Even
after controlling for the effects of conventional cardiovascular risk factors,
high work stress was associated with a doubling of risk of cardiovascular
death," he added.
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- Workers who had the highest job-related stress levels
at the start of the study were more than twice as likely to die of heart
disease, according to the study published in The British Medical Journal.
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- Work stress involves too much work as well as a lack
of satisfaction and feeling undervalued and unappreciated.
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- Many people work long hours but if the effort is rewarding
the stress is minimized. Kivimaki said job pressure is damaging when being
overworked is combined with little or no control, unfair supervision and
few career opportunities.
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- "It is when you have to put much effort into your
work but the rewards received are small," Kivimaki said.
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- Workers in the study who experienced the most adverse
effects of pressure were those who remained in the same stressful job with
the same employer for five years.
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- "Our evidence suggests that attention should be
paid to the prevention of work stress," Kivimaki said.
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- He also advised people with stressful jobs to monitor
their blood pressure and cholesterol levels and to exercise to reduce the
risk of heart disease.
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