Hazards: Work Stress Raises Women’s Heart Risk, Study Says

Women who are stressed at work are more likely than other working women to have a heart attack or other forms of heart disease, a new study suggests.

The findings, presented Monday at an American Heart Association meeting in Chicago, were based on data from 17,415 otherwise healthy middle-aged women who took part in the Women’s Health Study, sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute.

The researchers found that women who reported high job strain faced a 40 percent increase in cardiovascular disease over all, and an 88 percent increase in risk for heart attacks alone. (“Strain” was defined as demanding work with little decision-making authority or ability to use one’s creativity and skills.)

Women who were worried about losing a job did not experience an increase in heart ailments, but they were more likely than women with high job security to be overweight or to have high blood pressure or high cholesterol, all risk factors for heart disease.

Earlier studies on chronic job stress and heart disease in women have had mixed results, though studies of mostly male subjects have found a clear association between the two, said the study’s senior author, Dr. Michelle A. Albert, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

“You can’t get rid of stress, but you can manage it,” Dr. Albert said, adding that she recommends getting more exercise and maintaining contacts with friends and family. In addition, she said, “try to keep work at work.”

“If you have to work when you’re home, since we are all living in an electronic age,” she went on, “limit your time on e-mail. Otherwise you never leave work.”

Hormone therapy may prevent – or contribute to – dementia risk

Hormone therapy appears to affect the brain differently depending on the age of the woman when she receives it, researchers reported Thursday.

Hormone-replacement therapy for women has been the subject of considerable debate. Studies have shown both pros and cons. But hormone use has declined in the last decade because a major study on the issue, the Women’s Health Initiative, found that the risks of taking hormones appeared to outweigh significantly the benefits in older postmenopausal women. Among the findings was that beginning hormone therapy in women ages 65 and older led to a twofold higher risk of dementia.

Questions remain about the affect of hormones if taken at a younger age — among perimenopausal (the phase before menopause when hormones decline and fluctuate) or menopausal women in their early 50s. The new study, published in the Annals of Neurology, supports the idea that hormones can affect dementia risk differently depending on the age of the woman when she takes them.

Kaiser Permanente researchers examined data from members in Northern California from 1964 to 1973, among women 40 to 55 years old. The study examined whether hormones were used at midlife — defined in this study by the average age of 48.7 — or in late life, defined as age 76. Compared to women who never used hormones, those taking hormones only at midlife had a 26% decreased risk of dementia. This link held true even when the researchers controlled for other factors that contribute to dementia, such as high cholesterol and stroke.

However, taking hormones in late life may counteract whatever benefits are seen by taking hormones at midlife, the authors said. Women taking hormone therapy only in late life had a 48% increase in dementia. Women using hormones at both midlife and late life did not differ in their dementia risk from women who didn’t take hormones.

“The reduced risk of dementia associated with midlife hormone therapy use only lends support to the notion that it is not only early postmenopausal use of hormone therapy that is protective, but that use should also be limited to a few years,” the authors wrote.

Animal studies suggest that estrogen benefits brain health, and observational studies have shown that women who take hormones are less likely to develop dementia later in life. But studies such as the Women’s Health Initiative dashed hopes that hormones protected against cognitive impairment. Research now is focusing on whether there is a “critical window” for use — a specific time of life when hormones would do more good than harm.

High-stress jobs a health risk to women?

NEW YORK – Women with high-stress jobs face about 88 per cent more risk of a heart attack than if they had low workplace strain, according to Harvard researchers.

The scientists defined the stressful positions as those with demanding tasks and little authority or creativity.

Those jobs were also associated with a 40-per-cent greater chance of getting any kind of cardiovascular disease, according to a study presented yesterday in Chicago at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions.

Job strain, social isolation and some personality traits have been recognised as raising risks in both men and women, according to the Dallas-based heart association.

Past studies that focused on men, the traditional breadwinners, found that higher job stress raised heart risks.

This is the longest major one to look at stress in women, who now make up nearly half of the workforce in the United States.

“The big thing is, what’s happening to you now in terms of mental tension has long-term effects on your health,” said the study’s senior author, Assistant Professor Michelle Albert of the Harvard Medical School, who is also a cardiologist at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, both located in Boston.

The study analysed job strain in 17,415 participants from the Women’s Health Study, a US project that began in 1991 and ended last year, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, based in Bethesda, Maryland. Bloomberg