Working more than 8 hours a day leads to a heart attack

Is regular overwork worth your health? A study showed that if a person works more than eight hours a day, his risk of developing heart disease increases by 80%.

Experts from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health analyzed 12 studies from 1958 to the present day, which involved 22 thousand people from around the world. The analysis showed that if someone adhered to a work schedule exceeding the traditional eight hours a day, then in this case the risk of developing heart disease, in particular a heart attack, increased from 40% to 80%.

According to study author Dr. Marianna Virtanen, this connection is due to longer exposure to stress on the employee’s body. Other factors that increase your risk of heart disease include an unhealthy diet and lack of exercise. Interestingly, in 2009, the same group of researchers found that working long hours increases the risk of dementia in older people. Moreover, this effect was comparable to other risk factors for the disease, such as smoking.

It turned out that middle-aged workers who work 55 or more hours a week have worse brain function than those who worked 40 hours. Brain activity was assessed using various tests of intelligence, short memory and the ability to remember words.

Source: medicforum.ru