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Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#51

Post by WanderPanda »

meheleventyone wrote: post #27
ayushchat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I hope you're alright now. Can you share a bit more about what may be the reason for the heart attack? Your diet or fitness habits? I'm in my mid thirties, I think I'm fit, but constantly hear of "fit" people suffering heart attacks at this age.

Sure, the heart attack itself was caused by a thrombosis that fully blocked the left coronary artery. It actually came on whilst I was doing my morning swim. Results wise I got lucky and got fixed with a stent early enough that there doesn’t seem to be any (noticeable) damage to the heart. Right now the doctors don’t know precisely why I got this clot. Other than having it I’m in good health with no signs of chronic…

Hope you recover well!

Just concerning the breast stroke: I started to go swimming half a year ago and for lack of technique I did breast stroke instead of freestyle. After a couple months of 30min of swimming every day, I suddenly got terrible back pain during swimming (due the the backwards bent spine I guess). I started to learn freestyle and did not encounter the problems again. Just yesterday I did some breast stroke and I almost instantly got the pain again. Did you ever encounter this kind of back pain, or is it only my physiology?

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#52

Post by WanderPanda »

synaesthesisx wrote: post #29
meheleventyone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the heart attack itself was caused by a thrombosis that fully blocked the left coronary artery. It actually came on whilst I was doing my morning swim. Results wise I got lucky and got fixed with a stent early enough that there doesn’t seem to be any (noticeable) damage to the heart. Right now the doctors don’t know precisely why I got this clot. Other than having it I’m in good health with no signs of chronic…

Is there any chance you were exposed to COVID at any point? I know there’s an association between COVID-19 and clotting events (even for otherwise asymptomatic individuals)!

Alternatively exposure to some COVID vaccines seems to also increase risk of clotting

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#53

Post by freddie_mercury »

lnsru wrote: post #12

I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroyi…

Ah yes, the good old "my anecdote trumps science" post on Hacker News. If this happens on Hacker News, no wonder the rest of the world is even worse.

"Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the latest evidence were conducted for this study. Data from 37 studies on ischemic heart disease covering more than 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke covering more than 839 000 participants were synthesized. The study covered global, regional and national levels, and was based on data from more than 2300 surveys collected in 154 countries from 1970-2018."

The study has nothing to do with sitting in an office, despite what you claim.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#54

Post by zadokshi »

bachmeier wrote: post #38
admissionsguy wrote: post #35

> The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours. That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid. To put it in context, according to Google search infobox, "The global lifetime risk of stroke is approximately 25% starting at the age of 25", so the risk jumps from 2…

> I wonder if and how they managed to properly control for things like obesity or stress. You wouldn't want to control for those things if the mechanism by which working long hours affects your health is that it causes you to be obese and increases your stress levels.

Of course you need to control for other factors. I’d you don’t all you’d prove is that overweight and unhealthy people have more health problems. Which would not be a useful study.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#55

Post by satysin »

admissionsguy wrote: post #35

> The research found that working 55 hours or more a week was associated with a 35% higher risk of stroke and a 17% higher risk of dying from heart disease, compared with a working week of 35 to 40 hours. That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid. To put it in context, according to Google search infobox, "The global lifetime risk of stroke is approximately 25% starting at the age of 25", so the risk jumps from 2…

> That is a risk I'm willing to take, I'm afraid.

Fair enough, it is your life after all :)

I do have a question though - What are you doing with that extra 15 hours of work per week that justifies a 9% increase in the chance of stroke or heart attack?

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#56

Post by trhway »

>Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

on correlation vs. causation - may it be that the anxious, self-insecure, etc. people, ie. the people who manage stress badly, are more prone to those health issues as well as to those long stressful work hours?

For example anxiety - one of the source for it is bad oxygenation which in turn may result from the bad sitting posture (which makes harder for lungs and heart to perform their natural movements). As result your mental performance drops with corresponding work results. As a parallel result your heart works harder trying to push the blood, and the blood pressure rises, and your brain blood vessels are trying to expand and become more penetrable (i.e. the walls expand and get thinner) in order to get the enough oxygen to the brain tissue. This happening regularly naturally makes the foundation for the stroke and heart issues.

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#57

Post by watwut »

freddie_mercury wrote: post #53
lnsru wrote: post #12

I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroyi…

Ah yes, the good old "my anecdote trumps science" post on Hacker News. If this happens on Hacker News, no wonder the rest of the world is even worse. "Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the latest evidence were conducted for this study. Data from 37 studies on ischemic heart disease covering more than 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke covering more than 839 000 participants were synthesized. The…

> If this happens on Hacker News, no wonder the rest of the world is even worse.

Is there any reason to assume HN should be better then anyone else?

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#59

Post by myrmidon »

I'm curious what the approximate cost in life expectancy is from overwork and how it compares to heavy smoking (~10 years), but I was unable to estimate this from both the article and a quick glance at the study on its own.

Guesstimating from [Stroke risk DOI](https://doi.org/10.1016/S1474-4422(19)30030-4), which quotes a global lifetime risk of almost 20% for ischaemic stroke, that 35% risk increase is A LOT.

So the total damage to life expectancy from overwork is probably less than heavy smoking, but not by much-- which is both very surprising and alarming to me.

Note: This is a very rough and unscientific estimate, but Fermi would be proud. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_problem)

Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack

#60

Post by meheleventyone »

WanderPanda wrote: post #51
meheleventyone wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, the heart attack itself was caused by a thrombosis that fully blocked the left coronary artery. It actually came on whilst I was doing my morning swim. Results wise I got lucky and got fixed with a stent early enough that there doesn’t seem to be any (noticeable) damage to the heart. Right now the doctors don’t know precisely why I got this clot. Other than having it I’m in good health with no signs of chronic…

Hope you recover well! Just concerning the breast stroke: I started to go swimming half a year ago and for lack of technique I did breast stroke instead of freestyle. After a couple months of 30min of swimming every day, I suddenly got terrible back pain during swimming (due the the backwards bent spine I guess). I started to learn freestyle and did not encounter the problems again. Just yesterday I did some breast s…

I’d say you’re almost certainly not swimming the stroke correctly. You can definitely get into the habit of overarching your back and neck to get your head out of the water. I’d get someone who knows what they’re doing to check your stroke.

Switching up stroke is generally a good idea though.

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