------ I, DAANYEER TOTALLY AGREE WITH THIS RESEARCH --------
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Source: The Australian
January 21, 2006 Author: Adam Cresswell
CALLING all wage slaves: your job might be putting you on collision course with a heart attack.
Researchers have found that people with chronic work stress have double the chance of developing the metabolic syndrome - a group of factors including obesity, high blood fats and high blood pressure - which is considered the precursor of heart disease and diabetes.
But rather than affecting those in top jobs, the study published online by the British Medical Journal found those most at risk were lower down the food chain.
Workers who had chronic stress - high job demands coupled with little autonomy or control over their role, with few mentors or confidants in the workplace - were most at risk.
A leading heart expert welcomed the findings as "an important new observation".
Cardiologist Murray Esler, assistant director of the Baker Heart Research Institute in Melbourne, and an expert on the links between stress and heart disease, said the study showed the need for employers to give workers latitude to perform tasks their own way where possible.
As the medical evidence grew, it also raised the possibility of future litigation against employers who did not try to make workplaces healthier, he said.
The study recruited 10,308 British public servants from 20 government departments between 1985 and 1988.
They were aged between 35 and 55 at the start of the study, and they were asked to fill in questionnaires in 1989, 1991-93, 1995 and 1997-99 and given medical examinations.
Men with chronic work stress were nearly twice as likely to develop the metabolic syndrome as those with no exposure to work stress. Women with chronic work stress were more than five times more likely, but that result was questionable because of small numbers.
Stress raises levels of the hormone cortisol, which inhibits the action of insulin. Resistance to insulin is one of the causes of diabetes.