Men experiencing stress at work run higher risk of heart disease

Does your guy have a tough gig? Say thanks — it might just save their life, a new study suggests.

That’s right — stressed-out male workers who feel under-appreciated could be twice as likely to develop potentially deadly heart disease, according to a paper just published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.

An ambitious team of Canadian researchers spent nearly two decades studying stress and what’s known as “effort-reward imbalance,” or ERI, and the effects of both on coronary collapse.

The study found that those men who struggled with one of these issues saw a 49% increase in the risk of heart disease, as compared to men who didn’t report those stresses.

It also found that men who felt both stress and ERI together were at twice the risk for heart disease, compared to those who didn’t experience the combination.

The findings are similar to the harmful effects that obesity can have on a man’s health.

Lead study author Mathilde Lavigne-Robichaud, R.D., M.S., doctoral candidate, Population Health and Optimal Health Practices Research Unit, CHU de Québec-Université Laval Research Center in Quebec, Canada, said in a news release that job strain “refers to work environments where employees face a combination of high job demands and low control over their work.”

In turn, ERI is reportedly caused “when employees invest high effort into their work, but they perceive the rewards they receive in return — such as salary, recognition or job security — as insufficient or unequal to the effort,” Lavigne-Robichaud explained.

Heart disease can decrease blood flow to the heart, potentially causing a heart attack, per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In 2021, about 695,000 people died from heart disease — meaning that 1 in every 5 deaths was due to the condition.

To conduct the study, researchers followed 6,465 white-collar workers, men and women, for a total of 18 years — from 2000-2018 — who did not have cardiovascular disease.

Out of these patients, 3,118 were men and 3,347 were women, with an average age of 45.

In order to measure stress and ERI, they used validated questionnaires.

“Considering the significant amount of time people spend at work, understanding the relationship between work stressors and cardiovascular health is crucial for public health and workforce well-being,” Lavigne-Robichaud said.

“Our study highlights the pressing need to proactively address stressful working conditions, to create healthier work environments that benefit employees and employers,” Lavigne-Robichaud continued.

However, even though the study looked at both men and women, the researchers were not able to find a link between heart health and these various stressors in female participants.

They also noted that there was one limitation in the study — since the data was taken in Canada, it may not reflect the “diversity” of the working population in the US.

“Our results suggest that interventions aimed at reducing stressors from the work environment could be particularly effective for men and could also have positive implications for women, as these stress factors are associated with other prevalent health issues such as depression,” Lavigne-Robichaud said.

“The study’s inability to establish a direct link between psychosocial job stressors and coronary heart disease in women signals the need for further investigation into the complex interplay of various stressors and women’s heart health.”

The study comes just weeks after Novo Nordisk said that its obesity drug, Wegovy, has been shown to have a clear cardiovascular benefit in a large study.

The company claimed that patients taking the drug had a 20% lower incidence of heart attack, stroke or death from heart disease compared to those on a placebo.