Work stress and coronary heart disease: what are the mechanisms?

I’ll stop posting this medical research for now I’m just trying to make a point.

All this information is relevant to my aims.

The point here is, when people get sick at their job, they are sent to free medical treatment if they are lucky and live in developed countries but even they are treated as losers who couldn’t “make it” and their illness is seen as an individual weakness not as a consequence of their overall social condition. In our modern individualistic world people are expected to assume the consequences of the status quo as if they were themselves the causes for their maladies. It is so convenient for the status quo! And the people accept it with the same idiotic submission that people in cults accept full rape.

Work stress and coronary heart disease: what are the mechanisms?

Tarani Chandola1,*, Annie Britton1, Eric Brunner1, Harry Hemingway1,Marek Malik2, Meena Kumari1, Ellena Badrick1, Mika Kivimaki1 andMichael Marmot1

+Author Affiliations

1Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London, 1-19 Torrington Place, London WC1E 6BT, UK

2Department of Cardiac and Vascular Sciences, St George’s University of London, London, UK

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Abstract

Aims To determine the biological and behavioural factors linking work stress with coronary heart disease (CHD).

Methods and results A total of 10 308 London-based male and female civil servants aged 35–55 at phase 1 (1985–88) of the Whitehall II study were studied. Exposures included work stress (assessed at phases 1 and 2), and outcomes included behavioural risk factors (phase 3), the metabolic syndrome (phase 3), heart rate variability, morning rise in cortisol (phase 7), and incident CHD (phases 2–7) on the basis of CHD death, non-fatal myocardial infarction, or definite angina. Chronic work stress was associated with CHD and this association was stronger among participants aged under 50 (RR 1.68, 95% CI 1.17–2.42). There were similar associations between work stress and low physical activity, poor diet, the metabolic syndrome, its components, and lower heart rate variability. Cross-sectionally, work stress was associated with a higher morning rise in cortisol. Around 32% of the effect of work stress on CHD was attributable to its effect on health behaviours and the metabolic syndrome.

Conclusion Work stress may be an important determinant of CHD among working-age populations, which is mediated through indirect effects on health behaviours and direct effects on neuroendocrine stress pathways.