Everyone has those days where they call up their friend or loved one and they say, “my job is killing me.”
Sure, we all say it as a joke, but it may be truer than we want it to be.
If your job is high-stress, it may actually be killing you.
According to a recent study by the Southern Medical University in Guangzhou, China, men with high stress jobs have a 22 percent higher risk of stroke than those with low stress jobs. If you’re a woman, the news is even worse. Women are at a 33 percent higher risk.
The study combined six long-term studies, and looked at a total of 138,782 participants. High stress jobs were categorized as jobs with high demand (psychological pressure and time demand) and low control (how much control they had over decision making). Low stress jobs were the reverse: low demand and high control.
The high demand, low control jobs saw the stroke risk increase.
Other categories, like high demand high control or low demand and low control, didn’t have any adverse effects.
One in twenty deaths in America are due to stroke, and it’s also the leading cause of long-term disability.
There’s no definite reason there was a link between high stress jobs and stroke, but the lead author believes it has something to do with the behaviors that high-stress jobs generate.
“It’s possible that high-stress jobs lead to more unhealthy behaviors, such as poor eating habits, smoking and a lack of exercise,” he said.
High stress has already been connected to heart disease, but this is the first study that can definitively point to stress as the cause for stroke, while controlling for other factors.
So if you’re in a high stress job, what can you do?
If you’re in a job where stress reduction isn’t possible, you can still cut back your stroke risk by not smoking, eating right, and exercising. Let’s hope all employers eventually realize this is a problem and show they care for their employees.
