Thursday August 9 5:37 PM ET

Perceived Job Stress Raises Blood Pressure

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Workers who feel they have little control over demanding jobs may be particularly vulnerable to high blood pressure during the workday, according to researchers.

Investigators found that high job strain was associated with higher diastolic blood pressure. Diastolic blood pressure (DBP) refers to blood pressure levels while the heart is between beats--given as the second number in a blood pressure reading--while systolic pressure refers to pressure as the heart contracts.

Study lead author Dr. Jean Pierre Fauvel and colleagues at the Hopital E. Herriot in Lyon, France, took blood pressure readings of more than 300 healthy full-time employees at a French chemical company. All the workers underwent full medical exams, provided urine samples, and completed questionnaires to assess the general demands and stresses of their jobs.

In the study, the researchers measured DBP levels several times--both while the employees were subjected to a computerized mental stress exam and while at rest. Approximately one third of the workers spent 24 hours wearing round-the-clock portable DBP monitors.

Fauvel and his colleagues compared the blood pressure levels of the 20% of the workers who said they were subject to the highest amount of job strain with their co-workers' blood pressure levels.

The research team found that the ``high-strain'' group had significantly higher DBP levels during working hours. They also noted that exposure to non-job-related stresses, such as the computerized stress test, were not responsible for the raised DBP levels--and that the high-strain group did not exhibit notably higher DBP outside the office, according to the report in the July issue of Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association (news - web sites).

The study results confirm earlier research that found that workers with a large amount of responsibility, but no authority, suffered the most work-related stress. But in this study, blood pressure elevations were more closely associated with perceived job stress, rather than an individual's inherent cardiovascular makeup.

``Individual perception of strain should be considered as a cardiovascular risk factor,'' Fauvel and colleagues conclude.

SOURCE: Hypertension 2001;38:71-75.

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010809/hl/stress.html

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2001

Answers

Ah yes life can be a bitch, but there is hope! Posting to these webboards under the guise you actually give a crap about the topics, but are really blowing off work steam seems to work to lower your "levels".

This doesn't apply to anybody here of course, wink, wink.

-- Anonymous, August 10, 2001