Workers with higher job stress are more likely to have an expanded waistline, according to a new study that suggests why it is in employers’ best interest to create a healthy environment.
The study, involving employees of a downsized company here, found that stressed employees had a body mass index (BMI) that was about one unit heavier on average than that of their relaxed co-workers.
BMI is a measure of height and weight that estimates body fat.
Isabel Diana Fernandez, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and lead author of the study, said workers left behind at the downsized company often complained of more stress and more responsibilities, LiveScience reported.
“I think the message is that we have to take care of the employees who've remained," she said, adding that the findings are important in a time of widespread lay-offs.
Work stress has long been associated with cardiovascular disease, obesity and depression, among other chronic health conditions, but in the latest study, Fernandez and her team tried to investigate the combined effects of chronic job stress and short-term stress like the fear of unemployment.
The researchers measured the BMIs of 2,782 employees, mostly middle-aged men with college educations, who had all managed to save their jobs through the period of layoffs and asked about their diets, job stress and leisure-time activities.
The experts measured job insecurity or fear of losing job with short-term stress, while chronic stress was measured by the amount of control workers felt they had over their jobs and how heavy their responsibilities were.
The results showed no association between short-term stress and weight, but chronic stress was a different story.
Workers with more responsibilities and less control had BMIs one point higher than their co-workers with low responsibility and high control, even after adjustments for known obesity risk factors like age, race and income.
However, the effect of stress on BMI disappeared when researchers factored in leisure-time physical activity and television watching.
Using the Godin score, a measurement of how many times a person has done more than 10 minutes of exercise per day, the researchers found that for every drop in exercise frequency, BMI increased by 0.02 units.
They also found that watching television has also an adverse effect on people's health.
Although the findings represent a moment in time and can't show causation, they suggest that stress at work makes people likely to fall back on unhealthy behaviours at home, Fernandez said. “They go back home, and they only want to veg out.”
The findings, published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, are important for employers as well as employees, she added.
