The Link Between Working Long Hours And Heart Disease

Many people don’t have a choice about working longer hours. Thousands of people are going to need to do so in order to keep their jobs or earn enough money to support themselves and their families. However, the people who work long hours are often going to put themselves at a greater risk for all sorts of health consequences down the line. Working long hours can have a negative impact on a person’s lifestyle, which is going to ultimately take its toll on their bodies in a truly detrimental manner.

Heart Disease And Lifestyle

Working around forty-five hours a week is what is considered healthy. People who work even a little bit longer than that on average are going to steadily increase their risk of developing heart disease. A recent study involving nearly two thousand participants demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between working longer hours and developing coronary heart disease. There are many possible explanations for why this correlation exists.

It is believed that people who work longer hours are not going to have enough time to exercise. Having enough time to exercise will drastically reduce a person’s risk of getting heart disease. Engaging in aerobic exercise on a regular basis, with sessions of at least twenty minutes four times a week is known to reduce heart disease. The unfortunate thing is that people who work long hours are notorious for skipping exercise most of the time, for obvious reasons- lack of time.

Eating Habits And Stress

People who work long hours are often going to have bad diets because they are unable to shop for healthier food due to time constraints, and they might turn to unhealthy food in order to give themselves more energy after working long hours. Diet has a tremendous effect on a person’s risk of developing heart disease.

Working long hours is very stressful. People who work long hours are still often going to fail to get all of their work done, and they will typically stress about the completion of all of their job-related tasks. Working long hours and not getting work done is likely going to cause stress. Chronically stressed people are going to be significantly more likely to develop heart disease over time. Most individuals who are work long hours tend to feel more stressed by design, and they are also not going to be able to do much in order to manage their stress as a result.

Making Heart Health A Priority

What is recommended in general for people who work long hours is cutting back on even a few hours of overwork; doing so can allow people to reduce their risk of heart disease. In addition to cutting back, is adding in a half an hour a day to exercise instead of work in order to lower the risk of heart disease by an even wider margin.

Further studies on this link between heart disease and working long hours, are going to need to look into all of the details and causal factors related to overwork and poor heart health. They should look into the class elements, analyzing whether or not poor people who work long hours will be more likely to get heart disease than the rich people who work long hours.

Those who are forced into working long hours shouldn’t live in fear of the idea that they might be more likely to get heart disease. It is possible for people to mitigate their risk of heart disease even if they are working longer hours. There is probably a strong lifestyle component to this sort of thing. However, it is important for people who write policy, especially health care policy, to understand this situation. They’re going to be the individuals who can provide a solution that can solve a systemic problem like this one.