Effects of Work on Health
Except for a very small segment of the population—the lazy and the lucky, we’ll call them—most people will spend a huge portion of their lives working. For many of us, we will invest more than one-third of our adult years. Although working is in many ways a necessary part of modern-day life, enabling our chosen lifestyles, paying for food, shelter, clothing, education, and so on, studies have surfaced in just the past few years that contain groundbreaking, alarming data that we all need to take very seriously.
For men fortunate enough to punch out every day at 5:00 or 6:00, leaving all your work behind for the next shift or for tomorrow’s consideration, you’re in luck. But for the rest of you—people who regularly put in overtime, full-time working mothers (yes, even you!), as well as those who spend extensive time on the road—heed the warnings that follow.
A Finnish-led study published in 2009 in the American Journal of Epidemiology found that those working more than 55 hours a week had poorer mental skills than those who worked a standard working week, leading to mental decline and possibly dementia. While it’s still unknown why long hours have an adverse effect on the brain itself, researchers stated that “the disadvantages of overtime work should be taken seriously.”
In May of 2010, The Guardian printed results from a long-run British study that showed a 60-percent increase in heart-related illnesses, such as non-fatal heart attacks and angina, in those who work for three hours or more than a normal seven-hour day. Another long-term study, published in April of this year in the Annals of Internal Medicine journal, showed an increased risk (67 percent) of developing heart disease for people who work 11 hours or more per day.
A surprising new finding from a multitude of recent studies shows that sitting is one of the most dangerous things you can do. According to a story from The New York Times (February 23, 2010), “It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting…you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers, and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.” For those of you with office jobs, this is especially important. For those who may be underemployed and couch potatoes or living a sedentary lifestyle, you, too, could benefit from considering this data.
One rather shocking piece of news comes from a study published in February 2011 in the journal Child Development, drawing a direct link between mothers who work and obesity in children. The data translates to what the study’s authors suggest as “a gain in weight of nearly one pound (half a kilogram) every five months above and beyond what would typically be gained as a child ages” for every 5.3 months a mother is employed full-time. Moreover, childhood obesity has already been proven to lead to behavioral and academic problems in both adolescence and adulthood. Continued into middle age, very recent research has also shown that obesity increases the risk of developing dementia, including Alzheimer’s.
In May 2011, a study from Columbia University following 13,057 people found a direct connection between business travel and health. Among the three groups—people who did light business travel, those who didn’t travel for business, and “road warriors” who spend 21 days away on business—the last two translated to a higher incidence of obesity and other health risks. For both the non-travelers and the extensive travelers, blood pressure was higher than normal. The authors observed that people who forgo business travel may have ongoing health issues and, therefore, naturally display poor health. At the other end, people constantly traveling likely suffer from the negative health consequences of travel—unhealthful diets consisting of high-fat, low-fiber, high-calorie meals, lack of sleep, too much sitting, higher alcohol consumption, etc.
Business travel has also been associated with increased job strain in previous studies, not to mention the strains and stresses that travel itself includes. Stress can cause people to eat more energy-dense foods, leading to weight gain. Job strain has been associated with cardiovascular disease risk factors such as higher blood pressure and cholesterol, studies have also noted. Another study found an excess of insurance claims for stress-related disorders among travelers, with increasing claims seen with increasing travel.
For most of us, we have to work. That’s not debatable. The bottom line here is not that work itself is bad for our health, but that we need to maintain a healthy balance. The dangers of stress are already well-known; overworking ourselves simply exacerbates these risks. And given that modern-day society requires for most families that both parents work full-time outside the home, we need to take into consideration how our professional lives are affecting the health of the future generation of workers. After all, why do we put ourselves through so much strain and pain only to guarantee that we will not only decrease our chances of living to retirement, but also end up living out our years sicker than we ought to be, while guaranteeing our children will continue in our ill-chosen footsteps, and possibly not even outlive us?
