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 A quarter-century study of Finnish businessmen found those who
worked more than 50 hours a week and slept less than 47 hours weekly
when they were middle aged were in worse physical health as old men
than peers who had healthier work and sleep habits when they were in
their prime.
“The results are in line with what we hypothesized, but we were not
sure if we would be able to detect these long-term associations,”
said lead author Dr. Mikaela Birgitta von Bonsdorff of the
University of Jyvaskyla.
She and her coauthors examined a very unique cohort of old
businessmen, Dr. von Bonsdorff told Reuters Health by email.
The researchers used data from the Helsinki Businessmen Study to
follow the health outcomes for more than 3,000 white men born
between 1919 and 1934. About 1,500 of the men had provided clinical
characteristics of health, self-rated health, working hours and
sleep duration in 1974 when they were in their mid to late 40s, on
average, and completed health related quality of life surveys in the
year 2000, when most were in their 60s and 70s.
During their working years, nearly half of the original group of men
had what researchers considered normal working hours of less than 50
hours per week and 352 men worked more than 50 hours a week. Similar
proportions of men had normal sleep of at least 47 hours per week,
versus shorter sleep totals.
Researchers found that men with long work and short sleep or long
work and normal sleep in midlife had poorer scores for physical
functioning, vitality and general health than those with normal work
and normal sleep, according to the results published October 25 in
the journal Age and Ageing.
Midlife smoking and self-rated poor health at that time explained
some of the association with the results at older ages, but not all.
“My thought is that official working hours are not that long today
but the time that people actually work (e.g. email etc.) is not
included in the official working hours and thus my thought is that
people actually today work quite long hours,” Dr. von Bonsdorff
said. “I think that this is true for several professions,
particularly for white-collar jobs, businessmen, entrepreneurs and
managers.”
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Short sleep increases stress and strain, which are important aspects
of quality of life, she said, and sleep problems might be related to
an unhealthier lifestyle as well.
Professionals with disturbed sleep or experiencing sleep deprivation
will experience physical, cognitive and emotional changes, in
addition to a drop in immune function, said Dr. Marco Tulio de Mello
of Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte, Brazil,
who was not part of the new study.
“This is an exciting study because the follow-up is unusually long,
26 years,” said Dr. Mika Kivimaki at University College London in
the U.K. who also was not part of the new study. “It also adds a new
element to the research on long working hours as overwork in
combination with short sleep captures a stressful lifestyle much
better than long working hours alone.”
The effects of working life may persist into older ages and affect
the quality of retirement, Dr. Kivimaki told Reuters Health by
email.
“The results indicate that it is important to rest if working long
hours,” and employers should promote healthy living habits which
contribute to better sleep quality, Dr. von Bonsdorff said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2eHwICn
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