Dr. John's Health Matters
Welcome to Dr. John's Health Matters blog.
The articles posted here are from various sources who are duly acknowledged. I would appreciate being immediately notified, if any copywritten material needs to be removed. This blog is not intended to replace the qualified advice of a licensed health practitioner. Readers should exercise their own judgment. Enjoy, subscribe, participate and tell others :)
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Posts tagged "work"
Tuesday, Sep 1st, 2009 ↓Tags: workplace job work stress bullying bully sleep disturbance disorder suicide prevention risk violence harassment behaviour hostile
Daylight-saving Time Leads To Less Sleep, More Injuries On The Job, Study Finds →
Sept 1, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Every March, most Americans welcome the switch to daylight saving time because of the longer days, but also dread losing an hour of sleep after they move their clocks forward. Now a new study shows that losing just an hour of sleep could pose some dangerous consequences for those in hazardous work environments.
The findings are reported in the September issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological Association.
“One hour of lost sleep may not seem like a lot. But our findings suggest it could have an impact on people’s ability to stay alert on the job and prevent serious injuries.” said the article’s lead author, Christopher Barnes, PhD. Barnes and co-author David Wagner, PhD, were both doctoral students in organizational behavior at Michigan State University when they conducted this research.
For full article, see link above.
Tags: daylight savings sun sleep day danger hazard work environment injury alert risk
Why Rich People Really Aren't Happier →
Aug 24, 2009 (Mercola.com)—You already know that money doesn’t buy happiness. But more money doesn’t exactly make life a misery. The wealthy enjoy a sense of control over their lives. They feel secure in their jobs and less stressed about their futures.
But are they much happier than everyone else? Not really. Studies show that lottery winners, heiresses, and the 100 richest Americans are only slightly more satisfied than someone working in a generic office-park cubicle.
The ability to imagine is what sets humans apart from less-evolved species. But it can also be a problem. People assume that a sportier car, a bigger house, or a better-paying job will bring them joy.
But research shows that your memory is less like a collection of photographs than it is like a collection of impressionist paintings rendered by an artist who takes considerable license with his subject. People forget that their last new-car high deflated well before their first trip to the mechanic, and that their raise came with stressful late nights at the office.
In so many areas, people know when enough is enough. Yet the “pause” button often shorts out when it comes to money. The brief pick-me-up that accompanies a raise or windfall (think of it like a caffeine buzz) drives people to want more. But somehow happiness stays in the same place, or even slows down.
Most people need enough to cover the bills and have a bit of extra money left over. After that, each incremental move up the pay scale has less long-term emotional impact. A 20 percent raise won’t make you 20 percent happier. And, in fact, chasing that extra money might just make you miserable.
Sources:
MintLife October 24, 2008Workplace Yoga And Meditation Can Lower Feelings Of Stress →
Aug 5, 2009 (Sciencedaily.com)—Twenty minutes per day of guided workplace meditation and yoga combined with six weekly group sessions can lower feelings of stress by more than 10 percent and improve sleep quality in sedentary office employees, a pilot study suggests.
The study offered participants a modified version of what is known as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), a program established in 1979 to help hospital patients in Massachusetts assist in their own healing that is now in wide use around the world.
In this context, mindfulness refers in part to one’s heightened awareness of an external stressor as the first step toward relaxing in a way that can minimize the effects of that stress on the body.
While the traditional MBSR program practice takes up an hour per day for eight weeks supplemented by lengthy weekly sessions and a full-day retreat, the modified version developed at Ohio State University for this study was designed for office-based workers wearing professional attire.
For full article see link above.
Tags: workplace work employee stress office meditation yoga sleep quality mindfulness body
Driving To Work Increases Risk Of Heart Attack, Swedish Study Finds →
ScienceDaily (May 12, 2009) — People who drive to work run a considerably greater risk of having a heart attack than those who are physically active on the way to work. This is shown in a new dissertation by Patrik Wennberg at Umeå University in Sweden.
For full article, see link above.
Workers whose first health care visit after an injury was to a chiropractor had substantially better outcome. Spine Dec 2008.
Long Working Hours in May Impair Cognition →
January 19, 2009 (mescape) — Middle-aged workers who consistently work overtime appear to be at risk for mild cognitive impairment (MCI), researchers report.
In a prospective study of middle-aged British civil servants, those who typically worked more than 55 hours a week scored worse on a vocabulary test and showed a greater decline in reasoning ability than their colleagues who worked 35 to 40 hours a week.
Since MCI predicts dementia and mortality, identifying risk factors for the condition in middle age is important, the researchers, led by Marianna Virtanen, PhD, from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, in Helsinki, write.
“This study suggests that in addition to traditional risk factors for cognitive decline, such as biological age and disease, work-related factors, such as overtime, might contribute to cognitive decline,” Dr. Virtanen told Medscape Psychiatry.
For full medical article, see link above.
Incompetent Bosses Raise Risk of Heart Disease and Related Death →
Jan 15 09 (NaturalNews) When someone says that his or her boss ‘will be the death of me’, her or she could mean it more than just figuratively. According to recent research conducted in Sweden, employees’ risk of getting angina, heart attack and even death were higher when they felt that their bosses were incompetent.
Details of Study
Published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine in Nov 2008, the study team used data on over 3,100 Swedish men who were part of the Work, Lipids, and Fibrinogen Stockholm study. The men were aged 19 to 70 and the researchers checked their hearts while they were at work between 1992 and 1995. This information was then tallied with hospital records for occurrences of heart issues and death till 2003.
For full article, see link above.
Anxiety and Depression Linked to Overtime Work →
Oct 28 08 (NaturalNews) People who work overtime are more likely to be anxious and depressed - and the more they work, the higher the risk, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Bergen, Norway, and published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, official publication of the American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
The researchers assessed anxiety and depression by means of a standardized questionnaire in 10,350 Norwegian women and men who were taking part in a larger study. Nine thousand of the participants were working 40 hours a week or less, while 1,350 were working between 41 and 100 hours per week.
Among those who worked 40 hours a week or fewer, women averaged a 7 percent “possible” depression score, while men averaged 9 percent. In overtime workers, however, this percentage went up to 11 percent in women and 12.5 percent in men. Those who worked between 49 and 100 hours per week were the most likely to experience anxiety and depression.
For full article, see link above.
Weed Killer Chemicals Linked to Brain Cancer in Women →
Oct 08 08 (NaturalNews) Women who are regularly exposed to pesticides in the workplace are twice as likely to develop a common form of brain cancer, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the National Cancer Institute and published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Researchers examined the connection between brain cancer and workplace pesticide exposure in 1,400 adults living in the United States. In contrast to relying only on job titles as prior studies on the topic had done, the researchers estimated each participant’s workplace pesticide exposure. A total of 104 women had been exposed to pesticide. Among these, 33 (one-third) had developed brain cancer.
For full article, see link above.
