工作压力大易患心脏病

    相比其他大多数工业化国家的雇员，美国人工作时间更长，假期更短，退休更晚，因此很多美国人成为了职业倦怠的高发人群。职业倦怠是指长期工作压力造成的身心疲惫。

    以色列特拉维夫大学（Tel Aviv University）商学院和医学院的研究人员展开合作，试图弄清楚职业倦怠和心脏病之间有无关联。结果，他们有了惊人的发现：压力大的员工患心脏病的几率比压力小的员工高出79%。

    领导这项研究的沙龙•托克说：“这个发现令人震惊，远远超过了我们的预料。”这项研究成果发表在《心身医学》（Psychosomatic Medicine）杂志上。研究结果显示，职业倦怠是“非常强烈的冠心病指标，超过了其他的已知风险因素，包括血脂水平、身体活动和吸烟等”。

    “造成职业倦怠的某些因素在职场中很常见，包括压力大、工作重、缺乏对工作进展的控制、缺乏情绪支持和工作时间长，”她说。“这些东西会导致筋疲力竭，最终损害身体健康。”

    先前的研究已经表明，职业倦怠会导致很多健康问题，包括肥胖、失眠和焦虑等。在这项研究中，为了分析职业倦怠是否与冠心病（也就是冠状动脉斑块积聚导致心绞痛和心脏病发作）有关，研究人员对“看起来健康”的8,838名男女雇员进行了为期三年半的跟踪调查，衡量了每个参与者的“倦怠水平”，还检查了他们的心脏病症状。这项研究同时还考虑了其他的风险因素，例如性别、年龄、心脏病家族史和吸烟与否等。

    “跟踪调查期间，93个新的冠心病病例得到确诊，”研究报告写道。“职业倦怠使患病风险提高了40%……倦怠水平最高的那20%参与者的患病风险更是高出了79%。”

    “这些研究结果对预防医学很有价值，”托克指出。“如果医疗机构知道他们的病人承受着很大的工作压力，他们可以仔细监测病人是否有冠心病症状。”

    睿仕管理顾问公司（Right Management）最近进行的调查显示，92%的受访员工在过去五年里的工作压力大于经济衰退之前。怎么才能知道他们是否患上了职业倦怠？特拉维夫大学的这项研究让参与者用“从不”、“有时”、“经常”或“总是”来回答以下这五个问题：

    1. 早晨上班时你是否觉得疲倦和无精打采吗？

    2. 你是否觉得精疲力竭，就好像电池没电了？

    3. 你的思维是否缓慢，或者注意力不集中？

    4. 你是否难以认真思考工作中的复杂问题？

    5. 你是否觉得在感情上跟同事或客户很疏离，无法回应他们的需求？

    如果“经常”或“总是”的回答高于两次，就是个危险的信号。托克指出，经过时间验证的减压方法可以提供帮助，比如加强锻炼、增加睡眠等。但是，换份工作或许更管用。（财富中文网）

    译者：千牛絮

    Americans work longer hours, take fewer vacations, and retire later than employees in most other industrialized countries, so it figures that many of us are prime candidates for job burnout -- the physical and cognitive exhaustion that comes from too much stress at work over a long period of time.

    Even so, when researchers at the business and medical schools at Tel Aviv University teamed up to see if they could find a link between job burnout and heart disease, they got a surprise: The most disenchanted employees developed heart problems at a 79% higher rate than their less-stressed peers.

    "This is alarming and much more extreme than we expected," says Sharon Toker, who led the study, which was published in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine. The findings suggest that job burnout is "a stronger predictor of coronary heart disease than many other known risk factors, including blood lipid levels, physical activity, and smoking.

    "Some of the factors that contribute to burnout are common experiences in the workplace, including high stress, a heavy workload, a lack of control over job situations, a lack of emotional support, and long work hours," she adds. "These things lead to wear and tear, which will eventually weaken the body."

    Earlier research had shown that job burnout can lead to a range of health problems, including obesity, insomnia, and anxiety. For this study, to analyze whether staying too long in a job that makes you miserable could be connected to developing coronary heart disease (CHD) -- the buildup of plaque in the arteries that causes angina and heart attacks -- researchers tracked a population of 8,838 "apparently healthy" employed men and women for three-and-a-half years. Each participant was "measured for burnout levels" and examined for symptoms of heart disease. The study controlled for other risk factors such as sex, age, family history of heart disease, and smoking.

    "During the follow-up period, 93 new cases of CHD were identified," the report says. "Burnout was associated with a 40% increased risk ... But the 20% of participants with the highest burnout scores had a 79% increased risk."

    "These results are valuable for preventive medicine," Toker notes. "Health care providers who know that their patients are experiencing high levels of stress at work can monitor them closely for signs of coronary heart disease as well."

    Let's say that you -- like 92% of employees surveyed in a recent poll from consultant Right Management -- have been more stressed out at work over the past five years than you were before the recession. How can you tell whether you're headed for a serious case of burnout? The Tel Aviv University study posed these five questions, asking participants to answer with "never," "sometimes," "often," or "always":

    1. How often are you tired and lacking energy to go to work in the morning?

    2. How often do you feel physically drained, as if your batteries were dead?

    3. How often is your thinking process sluggish or your concentration impaired?

    4. How often do you struggle to think over complex problems at work?

    5. How often do you feel emotionally detached from coworkers or customers, and unable to respond to their needs?

    Two or more responses of "often" or "always" are a red flag. Toker notes that time-tested stress reducers like exercise and more sleep could help. Looking for a different job might help even more.