As college students, stress is at an all-time high for some students. With midterms, studying, getting little sleep, and having almost no free time can weigh heavily on a student. But, when this transfers into the adult world, these high levels of stress could become dangerous. When entering the job world, the levels of stress are typically even higher, and a new study suggests that higher levels of stress increases your risk for a stroke. Is this really true?
In this meta-analysis study published last week by scientists from China, scientists collected data from different studies on the relationship between high stress jobs and the risk of stroke. The studies collected included more than 130,000 people who were studied form a range of 3-17 years. To clarify how much stress each job had, they were arranged into 4 groups; Passive jobs, low-strain jobs, high-strain jobs, and active jobs. (In this case, by strain, they mean stress) Between 11-27 % of the people in the study were considered to have high-stress jobs. The results of the meta-analysis found that people with the high strain jobs had a 22% greater risk to have a stroke than those with the low-strain jobs. The risk for stroke for women, (33%) is higher in women than in men.
I think that this study could be counted as an effective one in examining and determining a correlation between jobs with a high stress level and the risk of a stroke. One thing that the meta-analysis did mention is that it is not the high stress job that directly increases the risk for stroke, it is the habits that may result from the stress that comes from the job. These habits could include eating unhealthy foods, smoking, and lack of exercise. So in this study, correlation is not causation. There are third variables present that cause the higher risk of stroke, not the actual high stress of the job.
In another study published in the Journal of Neurology, scientists collected data on the mental health well-being of 20,627 stroke-free participants, ranged from ages 41 to 80 years old. During the follow-up, 595 participants suffered a stroke. The results of the follow-up found that the participants with an increase in psychological distress had an 11% increased risk of stroke. This is also another study that was done properly and is legitimate because it was a large population base. This is another study that can add to the proof that there is a correlation between high stress job and the risk of stroke.
In the future, one might want to avoid getting a job that may cause high levels of stress. Obviously, high levels of stress in not good for the human body because it can take a heavy toll on the brain. But, in the future, if one has a job with high stress, one could be at risk for a stroke, and that is something to completely avoid.
Sources:
http://www.livescience.com/52482-high-stress-jobs-stroke-risk.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/job-stress-risk-of-stroke/
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/852736
http://www.webmd.com/stroke/news/20151014/job-stress-tied-to-stroke-risk-study-suggests
http://www.neurology.org/content/early/2015/10/14/WNL.0000000000002098
http://www.neurology.org/content/70/10/788.short?sid=562d2ac0-3133-456e-91f2-3ccd29bdecd6
http://tvnewsroom.org/newslines/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/People-With-High-Stress-Jobs-H.jpg
There are also lots of stress trigger for a college student such as due day for assignment, midterm, final, interviews so on and so forth. These studies show lots of evidence that stress in work environment may led to stoke while why those stresses in one’s earlier life does not have the same kind of relationship with stoke is interesting to me. Also third party variables such as family, age, social statues may could also led to stress or stoke beside one’s job.
It is also quiet interesting to me that your post mentioned that there is a higher trend of women who suffer from stoke in their mid-age due to stress than men by 33%. That is a huge difference to me. It may due to two reasons: first is that women suffer more stress than their men friends; and secondly may because that women may easier get stoke than men do even under similar level of stress. It seems that based on the informations we have now it is hard to judge what is the causation in this case since women does suffer more stress than men does in the mid age. It may due to women usually have a more complex definition than men do, as well as women have more things to worry about than men do, for example, 33% of women even found that holiday planning is one of their most stressful thing though out a year, and paternal instinct could also be a potential thereat to there level of stress.
http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2010/gender-stress.aspx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/05/stress-at-work_n_2812035.html
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2015/04/24/study-says-women-experience-far-more-stress-than-men-in-daily-commutes/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-3162252/Women-holiday-planning-travel-far-stressful-male-partners-s-perceived-lack-control.html
http://www.yourtango.com/2013196606/why-divorce-more-stressful-men-than-women
This is a very interesting post. I’m curious to know how they determined the increase in chance of stroke. Did more people who had high-stress jobs actually have strokes? I think it would be very hard to avoid high-stress jobs, but I wonder if doing things to destress would help, like doing yoga for instance. According to this article by Harvard, people can lower their chances of having a stroke by losing weight, drinking less alcohol, eating less salt, exercising, and eating healthy. I wonder eating unhealthily could be a confounding variable in the case of your argument? Maybe the people who have a high stress job have less time to exercise, and are more likely to stress eat, which could raise their risk of having a stroke.
I’m curious about what you said about avoiding high-stress jobs, because I feel like that is dependent upon the person, but I would definitely have to look into it more! I’m curious about it because I wonder if it has a big dependence on whether or not you enjoy the job. For example, if a person became a high-demand lawyer just because they wanted to make a lot of money, but another person did the same simply because they wanted to, would that make a difference? Because both of them would experience the same levels of stress, but one person would be doing so willingly and the other for the money. Maybe if you get into a profession that you are very passionate about, the stress may not be that bad because you are doing work that you don’t mind. But I guess it depends on what kind of stress a person is experiencing, and all of these outside factors. I definitely think it would be something really interesting to look into, and possibly do some longitudinal research on! If you are concerned about the stress, though, I found this list of the most and least stressful jobs of 2015