Long Working Days Can Cause Heart Problems, Study Says (theguardian.com) 75
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.
Who Knew ;) (Score:3)
Re:Who Knew ;) (Score:4, Insightful)
I hope you are getting rich and not someone else off your hard work.
Re:Who Knew ;) (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ah yes. "If you love your job you'll never work a day in your life."
Bullshit.
I like my job just fine. I work around tons of great, dedicated, hard working people who know what they are doing and never shirk. There isn't a single person at my job who would pass up a vacation day or who would give up a moment of time with their families for a day on the job.
To everyone who says "Work is play if you like your job", I reply "No one ever lay on their death bed and wished they had spent more time working"
Re: Who Knew ;) (Score:2)
I dunno. Surely someone has thought that. Perhaps their death was due to obesity or atrophy? Maybe they were leaving their family in debt?
Re: Who Knew ;) (Score:2)
Yeah, the more I think about this, the more I'm sure someone has. Picture a person who didn't tend their crops, or someone who was convinced they could have worked their way out of the potato blight. Yeah, I bet lots of people died wishing that they had worked more.
Some dude plummeting to their death when their chute didn't open? Probably wishing they had worked more to learn how to pack their chute better. Industrial accident? Probably wishing they'd worked harder in school and had a white collar job.
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If I get the chance on my deathbed, I'm going to think that exact thought. I'm even going to tell someone that I'm thinking it - assuming I'm able. We'll nip this stupid expression, right in the bud.
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Most people don't get to do that (Score:2)
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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.
No hubris in your post at all. Yes we know Confucius once said "Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." The reality is, how many people can find a paying job doing what they love? Not very many it turns out [gallup.com].
And you know, it turns out that you don't need to get paid to do work you love either. The problem is though if you have bills and you choose to do work that doesn't provide a source of revenue, you get to live as a homeless bum on the street after you get sued int
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Slacking Off causes Termination (Score:2)
Termination of income can cause starvation and death.
Enjoy being well-rested while you die.
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Termination of income can cause starvation and death.
Only in a few countries.
From the NSS Institute (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Wait, that doesn't properly translate to the acronym "BeauHD".
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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.
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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.
No, I'm referring to the fact that scientific research in the vast majority of cases studies something that has already been studied before. Often the reason is to build up statistical reliability, but it always originates from the fundamental truth, that experiments do not prove a theory; you can falsify, but never prove. Also, although the header says 'Long working days can cause heart problems", the actual theory they refer to, will be probing one or more angles in more detail - like, is it because peopl
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MOD Parent up.
I came here to see if they had done any control for the amount of time people were sitting at their jobs. If they didn't then the entire story is misleading.
Re:From the NSS Institute (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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70% of the population (from 80% to 10%) die between ages 75 and 95
Yeah, but what that doesn't tell you is what their quality if life was like. I'd rather live to 65 and be healthy and active than live to 95 but spend 30 years in pain or with dementia.
Actually even if I do only live to 65 it will be more than 30 years in pain, since I already started. That's a depressing thought.
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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.
The CDC published a rather good metastudy of cardiovascular and other health issues possibly caused by long working hours back in 2004. Direct PDF link [cdc.gov]
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Genetic differences, I'd guess.
A couple years ago I was talking to a sports medic, he said they have different charts and thresholds for different races because of genetic differences. i believe the proper word is phenotype? Genotype? Something-something.
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Do they?
It's quite possible that they do, but you'd have to post a link to a paper (not hidden behind a paywall) supporting that affirmation.
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Possibly because, often being poorer, their typical diet doesn't match the diet of a typical white.
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Correlation or Causation? (Score:1)
Is it because of
A) the long hours spend there (presumably on your chair), or
B) your boss shouting at you to get this done by Date X or being fired, or maybe
C) not getting enough sleep to normalize your cortisol levels, or
D) not having time to go workout, or perhaps
E) some of all of the above?
Re: Correlation or Causation? (Score:1)
Nothing new under the sun (Score:5, Informative)
They could have asked Japan (or Korea, or China) to learn about documented death by overwork:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Forget correlation/causation. Sample bias? (Score:1)
They assign young engineers to assist our team to do translation etc, and these guys show up 7:30 in the morning at the hotel room, stay with them till 10:30PM, and then show up fresh as a daisy next day morning 7:30. They seem to spend 12 hours a day at work.
Panasonic actually implemented a policy limiting its workers to 80 hours a week.
One possible conclusion could be Europeans are lazy and they
Re:Forget correlation/causation. Sample bias? (Score:5, Informative)
Is that a long working day? (Score:2)
Genetics (Score:1)
It's not a shock, but at the same time it's a little too easy to translate that to "stop working long hours or you'll die younger." The question is what would you be doing in those extra hours if you had it? Lie around the pool? Watch TV? Train for a marathon?
I think most of this is driven by how you manage stress and genetics. No question if you feel constantly under (bad) stress at work, the longer you spend there the worse for you. When I went from taking a couple of years off to working a solid 44 hour
lifestyle? (Score:1)
So how come... (Score:2)
... African American people have higher rates of heart disease <its-a-joke>
But seriously since the study was European you would imagine heart disease would've taken a dip since lower hour work weeks are not just the norm but government enforced. Yet other studies show heart disease rising in European countries.
Sitting is the new smoking (Score:2)
[A] sedentary culture and studies show all that sitting is taking a major toll on employee health.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Publication bias? (Score:2)
Supports other research: too sedentary is bad (Score:2)
For instance, this "couch potato" article from 2008: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com] (may be paywalled).
Some ideas what to do about it: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com] (may be paywalled).
and this: https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com] (OK - I keep giving NS articles because I subscribe and there's no paywall for me.)