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Female Should Avoid High Stress Job To Prevent Heart Disease!
 

The prevailing economic situations make it hard for workers to be from stress. Few strive to perform well enough for them to climb up the corporate ladders while the majority of them simply just want to keep their jobs.

Working under stressful condition is definitely not healthy! Past studies that focused mainly on male workers had already showed that higher job stress raised risk of heart disease. But with the increasing number of female workers, it is time to look at how job stress would affect women workers’ health.

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston found that female workers with stressful jobs were more likely than women with less job strain to suffer heart attack or stroke or to have clogged arteries. They further pointed out that worrying about losing a job could also be a risk factor of heart disease.

17,145 participants in the Women’s Health Study were involved in the long-running trial that looked at heart disease and cancer prevention. These women, who were mostly health professionals, were healthy and aged 57 years old on average, and they had been employed on either full- or part-time basis when the trial started in 1999.

These participants filled out surveys regarding their jobs, rating statements such as ‘my job requires working very fast’ and ‘I am free from competing demands that others make’. They were then divided into 4 groups based on the stress they reported. 10 years later, they were re-examined to see how they fared. The findings were presented on November 14, 2010 at an American Heart Association conference in Chicago.

Women with stressing jobs and little control on how to do them were nearly twice as likely to have suffered heart attack as women with less demanding jobs and more control. Moreover, the high-stress group was 40 percent more risky in terms of heart disease development, including heart attack, stroke or clogged arteries that require bypass surgery or angioplasty procedure. Higher blood pressure, cholesterol and body weight were also found in women who worried about losing their jobs.

Stress is harmful, according to some health experts, because it will release ‘fight or flight’ hormones, spur inflammation and raise blood pressure. They also added that in reality, female workers do not have the type of jobs similar to their male counterparts and often lack authority or control over their works.

For instance, a woman aged 46 working in a teleconference center in Boston got into heart problems in the summer of 2008 and took her second medical leave of absence in 2 years. She had to manage 16 operations running corporate conference calls, and she needs to run from operator to operator to solve problems that occur during the call. This is certainly very stressful for her!

In the summer of 2008, she started feeling chest pain and collapsed while walking one night. Though tests could not find any sign of heart disease, doctor gave her nitroglycerin pills that can relieve chest tightness due to constricted heart arteries. Thereafter, pain came again a few other times but was gone after she took the nitro.

Based on the findings, the researchers urged doctors to take stress seriously and should start asking their patients about stress together with traditional risk factors such as smoking and blood pressure.

Meanwhile, they also offer some tips for the female workers:

- Exercise is a must as it clears the mind, lifts the mood and prevents other heart disease risks including high blood pressure and cholesterol.

- Bringing work home is very common nowadays but it is definitely not encouraged.

- One should do things with friends even if they were not colleagues.

- Each day, one should allocate at least 10 to 15 minutes to do something, be it mediation, praying or taking a walk.

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