If you still have a job in this economy, you're supposed to feel grateful. But stress is what more people tend to feel at work these days, and a new study finds that for those who experience such strain on the job, the risk of developing heart disease increases by about 25 per cent.
That elevated heart attack risk, however, is lower than has been widely supposed, the authors of the new study wrote Thursday in the journal Neurology. While addressing workplace stress might help improve employees' health, they said, there's lower-hanging fruit that would yield higher health benefits, including an expansion of efforts to get smokers to kick the habit.
The latest research is not a fresh study but a compilation of existing studies, some published in medical journals, others not. It gathers evidence of the link between job stress and heart disease from studies conducted in seven European countries.
