Long working hours trigger both regular and hidden high blood pressure

New York: People who spend long hours at the workplace are more likely to have high blood pressure – including a type that can go undetected during a routine medical appointment, researchers warned on Thursday.

Compared with colleagues who worked fewer than 35 hours a week, working 49 or more hours each week was linked to a 70 percent greater likelihood of having “masked” hypertension and 66 percent greater likelihood of having sustained hypertension — elevated blood pressure readings, according to the study published in the American Heart Association’s journal Hypertension.

The findings were true for both men and women staffers and accounted for variables such as job strain, age, sex, education level, occupation, smoking status, body mass index (BMI) and other health factors.

“Both masked and sustained high blood pressure is linked to higher cardiovascular disease risk,” said lead study author Xavier Trudel, assistant professor in the social and preventive medicine department at Laval University in Quebec, Canada.

The new study, conducted by a Canadian research team, enlisted more than 3,500 white-collar employees at three public institutions in Quebec. (IANS)

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