An alarming study finds that those in high stress jobs are at a huge risk of stroke.
Bad news for people in high stress job: a new study finds that you are greatly at risk of a stroke, at least much more so than those who have a lower stress job.
And that affects a lot of people, with millions of Americans working high stress jobs. A study out of Southern Medical University in China watched 140,000 over a period of between 3 and 17 years and found that those with high stress jobs had a 22 percent higher risk of having a stroke, and in some cases increased it by as much as 58 percent, according to a Reuters report.
High stress jobs are defined as jobs where there is a high amount of demand or time pressure and a low amount of control over decision making.
Scientists have theorized a link between high stress jobs and health problems, but the study goes a lot further, operating on a wide scale and using an established formula to develop some hard numbers on just how much of an increased risk there is depending on the job.
There are several categories that jobs were placed in. Low stress jobs, where there was low demand and a high degree of control, obviously seemed to have the least negative impact on health. But other jobs that only met one of the criteria but not the other also showed no increase in stroke risk: these included high demand but high control jobs, like teachers and doctors, and low control but low demand jobs, like janitors and manual laborers.
It’s the high stress jobs where scientists saw a big jump in the risk of stroke, with women seeing an even bigger increase — 33 percent over the control group. The risk of ischemic stroke leapt 58 percent compared to low stress jobs.
Daniel J. Brown
Daniel J. Brown (Editor-in-Chief) is a recently retired data analyst who gets a kick out of reading and writing the news. He enjoys good music, great food, and sports, with a slant towards Southern college football, basketball and professional baseball.