Working Yourself to Death? Take a Reality Check

Hard charging workaholics: working for more than 55 hours/week raises your risk of stroke & heart diseases by a THIRD

The largest ever study done on 6 lakh people from the US, Australia, and Europe established a relationship between working hours, heart health and brain health (Photo: iStock)

24/7 is the new 9-to-5. Chained to your desk, how many times have you thought, “my job is going to kill me”! Truth is, you might have been right.

A large-scale study published in British medical journal, The Lancet, has linked longer working hours to an increased risk of stroke and heart disease.

So go ahead and book your dream vacation already! I knew, I shouldn’t have taken chances when they said, hard work never killed anybody. 

Hard Work Kills: The Study

Recording more hours can seem like the faster path up the career ladder, but many employees can lose sight of whether they’re filling those hours with substantive work or empty calories like endless e-mailing, tweeting, and internet searches (Photo: iStock)

Researchers from University College London analysed a whopping 6 lakh private sector employees across United States, Australia and some European countries for nearly 9 years.

After controlling factors, like, smoking, alcohol consumption and physical activity, the researchers found that people working between 8 to 9.5 hours a day (for five days a week) had a 10% higher risk of stroke and heart disease than those working a more normal schedule of 7 hours a day. Those working 10 to 12 hours every day had a 27% higher risk; and those working 12 hours or more, a scary 33% greater risk of hospitalisation, and death from the disease.

(Photo: The Quint)

Researchers found the stress of long hours can trigger biological changes in the body which, over time, can lead to deadly disease.

Long working hours are not a negligible occurrence. Prevention of stroke and heart disease has focused almost exclusively on measures such as diet, exercise and medicine. But this important study has that work conditions can also be critically important to your health.
– Mika Kivimäki, Professor, Epidemiology, University College London

Still think clocking in more hours is a faster path up the ladder?

Read this - earlier this month, a study in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine by researchers at Harvard found that working more than 40 hours a week and regularly engaging in heavy lifting, impacts a woman’s ability to become pregnant. In this study done on nearly 1,800 nurses who wanted to conceive, those who worked for 8 hours a week took 20% more time and help of medication to get pregnant than those who worked 4 to 8 hours a day.

How Did We Get So Busy?

It’s true: no one wants to be the first one to pack up for the day. But the end result can be staying late just to be seen (Photo: iStock)

Growing up, my grandfather believed that with growing money power and all the modern advancements, the main problem of our generation would be too much leisure time.

It’s not worked out like that.

Blame technology for the 24-hour job: you start your day by scouring e-mails from bed, beneath the covers, and end it there too, with a final scroll before snatching some sleep.

With most office goers using smart phones, an average person checks their phone every 15 minutes, gone are the days when you could pretend to have missed a mail.

Putting in more face time (or e-face time) doesn’t necessarily result in getting ahead and can fuel exhaustion. Haven’t you seen the world’s best athletes toggle between high performance and recovery, because it prevents burn-out. Career consultants advise to mimic this regimen.

You have to be in recovery. Get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep most nights and take 10 to 15 minute breaks thrice during the workday, alternating between active breaks, like walking outside, and passive ones, like resting on a bench. It might seem obvious, but how many non-smokers follow this regimen? (The smokers we know need to step out for regular breaks)
– Disha Manchanda, Career Consultant

So if you have a choice, pay heed, your 24*7 job won’t last a lifetime, your health will.

Also Read:

Sitting For Too Long? Your Office Chair Can Kill You