The
British Medical Journal has
published the first article to definitively link work
stress to heart disease. Particularly among men, work
stress for
more than a decade was linked to obesity, high blood pressure, and heart disease. The
stress can also be linked to
diabetes, although researchers are not yet sure how the mechanisms work. However,
stress's effect on the nervous system
may affect the body's ability to recover from agitations.
It may not be immediately clear why this study is
significant. After all, common sense suggests that work
stress is bad for health. However, there is a distinct
difference between what physicians may know anecdotally, and what they can prove with evidence. Given the medical
community's increasing emphasis on evidence-based medicine, showing a clinically proven link between work
stress and
cardiovascular disease can now influence policy, which means that human resources personnel have evidence to support
taking measures to reduce
stress in the workplace. This has the potential to lead to funding which can improve
health-promotion in the workplace, including protected exercise time during the work day.
