If you’re under stress at work, you’re not only risking your emotional health, but your heart wellness too. This is according to new research, published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, which says that putting down the beer bottle and going for a walk may help alleviate job strain.
Defining job strain as having a lot of demands at work, but little control, the researchers found it was linked to a 25% higher chance of having a heart attack or dying of heart problems. However, the researchers also found that people—stressed or not—who maintained a healthy lifestyle had half the heart risks of those who drank, smoked, or were obese. Lead researcher Mika Kivimaki, from University College London, explained, ‘For many people avoidance of work stress is unrealistic. Thus, we wanted to ask the question whether adopting an otherwise healthy lifestyle would reduce heart disease risk among those with job strain.’
For the research, the team looked at the results of seven European studies that surveyed 102,000 people about their general lifestyle habits and health. This included how much strain they were under at work, but none of those participants had heart disease at the start of the study. Across the trials, there were about 1,100 heart attacks or deaths from heart disease over the next seven years. The researchers worked out that 4% of all heart attacks and heart disease deaths could be attributed to job strain and about 26% to drinking, smoking, obesity, and lack of physical activity. Kivimaki commented, ‘We hope this message reaches those who want to reduce their heart disease risk but feel they cannot avoid work stress.’
According to cardiologist Dr. Vincent Figueredo from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, the results are in line with past studies suggesting that chronic stress, including from job strain, can have negative effects on wellbeing. ‘With chronic stress, there’s activation of these systems that can have long-term effects on things like insulin resistance, central obesity, (and) high blood pressure,’ said Figueredo, who wasn’t involved in the new research. He noted that the study ‘does offer some hope for those people who do have that job strain they can’t do anything about at work. If you’re stuck being stressed at work, at least go out and exercise, don’t smoke, and eat healthy.’