Kathmandu, December 20

A new study found that working for longtime on the job could lead to high blood pressure.

According to an American Heart Association study funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, working for 49 or more hours than that per week is linked to a 66% higher chance of getting hypertension. That could further result in developing masked hypertension—a condition that often goes undetected during routine doctor's visits.

Not only that, working even only for 41 hours a week, only an hour longer than the typical workweek, could raise the risk of high blood pressure, as per CBS News.

The researchers studied more than 3,500 white-collar employees, who wore blood-pressure monitoring devices for regular reading, at three public institutions in Quebec over a five-year period. The researchers also considered participant's age, gender, education, occupation, smoking status, body mass index, level of job stress and other variables.

The outcome was that both ordinary hypertension and masked hypertension put patients at a higher risk for cardiovascular disease, according to Xavier Trudel, the lead author of the study. Trudel also pointed out that such as family duties could also play a role in affecting workers' blood pressure.

The researchers also advised to wear a heart monitor to track blood pressure over a period of time.

Studies have found that delaying diagnosis and treatment could put patients at a greater risk of serious illness or death as high blood pressure affects nearly half of US adults and results in more than 82,000 deaths per year. 

Hamro Doctor