Silent sufferers risk heart disease
Tuesday November 24th, 2009
Workers who feel they are being treated unfairly may need to speak out - if they are not to suffer the effects in ill-health, researchers claimed today.
The study of male employees is the latest to link stress at work to heart disease.
But British experts said the problems occurred when people turned to unhealthy habits, such as smoking, drinking and over-eating, to cope with stress - not because of stress itself.
The latest findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, come from research involving some 2,755 men in Sweden. Some 47 of them suffered from a heart attack or died from heart disease within a decade.
The researchers concluded that those men who "persistently failed to openly express their anger" were twice as likely as others to develop serious heart disease.
And adopting a strategy of walking away from conflict was equally damaging - and was linked to a three times increased risk, according to Dr Constanze Leineweber, of Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden.
But Judy O'Sullivan, a senior cardiac nurse with the British Heart Foundation, said: "Stress itself is not a risk factor for heart and circulatory disease, but some people's responses to stress, such as smoking or overeating, can increase your risk.
"We all find different things stressful and symptoms of stress can vary, but the important thing is that we need to find ways of coping with it in our lives in a positive way, whether at work or home."
* A second study last night showed how moderate exercise can help protect men from having a stroke.
Researchers from Columbia University studied more than 3,000 people in New York, USA, with an average age of 69.
They report in the journal Neurology that men who took part in exercise such as jogging, tennis or swimming were 63 per cent less likely than others, including those who took light exercise, to have a stroke.
J Epidemiol Community Health 2009 doi 10.1136/jech.2009.088880, Neurology November 24 2009
Tags: Europe | Fitness | Heart Health | Men’s Health | Mental Health | UK News
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