Heading for a heart attack? Civil servants on their way to work in Whitehall. Photograph: Martin Argles/Guardian
A long-running Whitehall study, which has followed the health of more than 10,000 civil servants since 1985, has concluded that working overtime is indeed bad for your health.
This latest analysis from a study, reported in the European Heart Journal, looked at the working patterns of more than 6,000 people, aged 39-61, over an average of around 11 years.
The research shows a 60% increase in heart-related illness such as non-fatal heart attacks and angina in those who work for three hours or more longer than a normal seven-hour day.
One or two hours' overtime made no difference to people's health, the researchers from University College London and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found. But three or more hours led to a 60% increased risk of coronary heart disease.
One of the explanations might be to do with the type of people who work long hours, who are classified within the Whitehall study as evincing "type A" behaviour – aggressive, competitive, tense, time-conscious and generally hostile.
Another factor could be psychological distress in the form of depression and anxiety, and possibly not enough sleep, or not enough time to unwind before going to sleep. The overtime workers could also be the sort who are more likely to carry on working while unwell, or may have high blood-pressure during office hours which does not show up at the GP surgery.
But none of these things fully explain the raised heart disease risk. Dr Marianna Virtanen, an epidemiologist in Helsinki who worked on the study, added that they had not measured what happens if people reduce their hours.
"One plausible explanation for the increased risk could be that adverse lifestyle or risk factor changes are more common among those who work excessive hours compared with those working normal hours," she said. "Another possibility is that the chronic experience of stress (often associated with working long hours) adversely affects metabolic processes. It is important that these hypotheses should be examined in detail in the future."
The authors also warn that their civil servant cohort was exclusively white-collar and public sector, and therefore the findings cannot be extrapolated to people in blue-collar jobs or in the private sector.
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
