Long Working Days Can Cause Heart Problems, Study Says (theguardian.com)

According to a major new study, long days at the office can be bad for your heart. While the risk of stroke is increased from working too many hours in the office, it seems that working more than 55 hours a week means a 40% higher chance of developing an irregular heartbeat (atrial fibrillation), when compared to those with a better work-life balance. The Guardian reports: The research team, led by Professor Mika Kivimaki from the department of epidemiology at University College, London, analysed data on the working patterns of 85,494 mainly middle-aged men and women drawn from the UK, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. Participants were put into groups according to their work pattern, with 35-40 hours a week regarded as the control group. No one had AF at the start of the study, published in the European Heart Journal. After 10 years of follow-up, an average of 12.4 per 1,000 people had developed AF, but among those working 55 hours or more, this figure was higher at 17.6 per 1,000 people. Those working the longest hours were more overweight, had higher blood pressure, smoked more and and consumed more alcohol. But the team's conclusions about longer working hours and AF still remained after taking these factors into account.

Comments

Who Knew ;)

[oldgraybeard]

I am 61 and I just did a no sleep 24+ crashed at 6pm the next day and woke at 2300 hrs (so 5 hours of sleep) guess i should worry ;) But then again i drink a pot of coffee a day ;) lol

Re:Who Knew ;)

[AmiMoJo]

I hope you are getting rich and not someone else off your hard work.

Re:Who Knew ;)

[PeeAitchPee]

I know this is hard for some people to grasp, but there are other reasons to work hard besides "getting rich." The happiest people I've met are those who get to do what they love every day. When you find yourself in that position, working crazy hours and getting immersed in trying to figure something out for days on end, and then actually accomplishing something real *is* a very big part of it. Rich people can't buy that feeling -- it has to be earned.

Slacking Off causes Termination

[Anonymous Coward]

Termination of income can cause starvation and death.

Enjoy being well-rested while you die.

From the NSS Institute

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a known fact, has been known, has been studied, and is not only common knowledge but also common sense. Another waste of time and money from the No Shit Sherlock Institute of Bloody Obvious Conclusions.

Re:From the NSS Institute

[Viol8]

You're assuming this connection hasn't been studied before. Its been studied for decades and there are dozens of papers, the OP is correct.

Re:From the NSS Institute

[Keith_Beef]

Except that for the past few decades, the medical establishment has been shouting "factory workers die of heart attacks because they fry their food in lard and the cholesterol blocks their arteries".

Now that medical research is starting to show that vegetarian office workers are suffering from heart problems, the focus is shifting.

What I have suspected for a long time (I grew up in a working class environment, many neighbours and family members were shift workers in steel and manufacturing industries) is now being confirmed.

Stress (poverty, uncertainty about the future, circadian rhythms disrupted by shift work, danger of accidents, macho culture and violence) exacerbated by the self-destructive "coping strategy" of over-consumption of alcohol ("getting a skinful on Friday and Saturday nights") damages the heart muscles, among other things. Over-consumption of refined carbohydrates (white flour and white sugar especially) play havoc with our metabolism, too.

Salt, dietary cholesterol and animal fats are not the causes that they were claimed to be, and this truth is finally coming out.

Gary Taubes has done a great job in bringing these truths to the public, but there is still much work to be done.

Re:From the NSS Institute

[Kjella]

Meh, truth is you're probably going to die roughly when it's time. I checked the stats here in Norway not that long ago and 70% of the population (from 80% to 10%) die between ages 75 and 95. Of the early deaths there are many due to suicide, traffic accidents and other non-medical conditions, more still due to excessive use of drugs, alcohol and tobacco with a lot of alcohol-induced stupidity leading up to the former. The rest mainly show up as "statistical" diseases, yes if you carry 10 kg too much all your life your heart will work slightly harder and you will give up the ghost a bit sooner. The question is what do you gain and what do you lose by always living the "right" life, if it's only chopping off a bit when you're old and frail anyway.

In fact, if you baseline the "invariant" death rate based on ages 1-45 (excluding 0-1 as a few are born with fatal defects) only about 4% die from things that would kill a young person, 96% of us at least partially die from old age. Old age and cancer. Old age and heart failure. Old age and respiratory failure. Old age and "harmless" diseases. We're getting constantly better at curing the specific ill that threaten an old person's life but we're not really addressing the accelerating frailty inherent in old age meaning that at some point even a stiff breeze will send you over the edge. And that curtain call is coming no matter how much clean living you do, though there's no reason to kill yourself prematurely there's also no point in thinking it'll give you more than a few years.

Nothing new under the sun

[Kergan]

They could have asked Japan (or Korea, or China) to learn about documented death by overwork:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:I'm skeptical

[Kergan]

Possibly because, often being poorer, their typical diet doesn't match the diet of a typical white.

Re:Forget correlation/causation. Sample bias?

[hughbar]

See karoshi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...