Healthy people with stressful jobs who work long hours but get little satisfaction from what they do have twice the risk of dying from heart disease as satisfied employees, according to a study.
Job stress has been known to trigger heart problems in people who already have cardiovascular disease. Now Finnish scientists have now shown that even in healthy people the pressures of work can take their toll.
Obesity, high blood pressure, lack of exercise, smoking and being overweight contribute to heart disease -- a leading killer in many industrialized countries.
But Mika Kivimaki, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, and his colleagues, who studied the medical histories of 812 healthy Finnish men and women in a metal industry company over 25 years, said job stress also plays an important role.
Workers who had the highest job-related stress levels at the start of the study were more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to the study published in The British Medical Journal.
Work stress involves too much work as well as a lack of satisfaction and feeling undervalued and unappreciated.
Many people work long hours but if the effort is rewarding the stress is minimized. Kivimaki said job pressure is damaging when being overworked is combined with little or no control, unfair supervision and few career opportunities.
The British Heart Foundation said the results support earlier research showing that people in jobs with low control, such as manual workers, could be at greater risk of heart disease than other employees.
"It is advisable for people to try to minimize levels of stress at work and for employers to allow people to have more control at work and to be rewarded for their successes," the foundation said in a statement.
(Agencies)
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研究表明:在健康人群中,那些工作時間很長但是卻對工作現狀不滿的人死于心臟疾病的幾率是正常人的兩倍。
眾所周知,對于心血管功能不好的人來說,太大的工作壓力更容易引起心血管疾病。但最近芬蘭科學家的研究結果告訴我們,即便對于健康人來說,工作壓力仍有可能奪去他們寶貴的生命。
在許多發達的工業化國家,心臟病是奪走人們健康的頭號殺手,而引起心臟病的因素有很多,包括肥胖、高血壓、缺乏鍛煉、抽煙甚至體重超重等等。
然而,在過去的25年里,芬蘭職業衛生研究所米卡·基維邁基和他的同事們對芬蘭一家金屬公司的812名健康芬蘭職工進行了長期的病史跟蹤研究。結論是:工作壓力過大同樣也是導致心臟病發作的重要因素之一。
基維邁基將自己的研究結果發表在《英國醫學雜志》上,文中他提到,他在研究初期發現,工作壓力過大的人群死于心臟病的幾率是正常人的兩倍之多。
工作壓力包含很多方面,如工作量過大、對工作感到不滿意、或在工作中不得志等。
有時經常會出現這樣一種情況:許多人工作量也相當大,但是工作很有成效,這種情況下工作壓力就會相對減輕。基維邁基說工作量過大的人如果遇上差勁的管理、糟糕的上司和黯淡的工作前景,工作壓力就會驟增,對健康的破壞力也同時加強。
英國心臟基金會認為基維邁基的這一調查與基金會早前的一項研究結果一致。在那份研究中他們得出的結論是:在工作控制較低的行業工作的人,如體力勞動者,得心臟病的幾率就明顯高于其他行業。
基金會的一份文件中這樣寫道:"建議人們平時在工作當中要量力而行,盡量將工作壓力降到最小程度。同時雇主們也要盡量減輕員工的工作壓力,改善管理體系并及時論功行賞。"
(中國日報網站譯)
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