According to the study, people working 3 or 4 hours of overtime per day are 1.6 times more likely to develop coronary heart disease than employees working 7 to 8 hours per day.
To reach this conclusion, the researchers followed more than 6,000 healthy British civil servants aged 39 to 61 from 1991-1994 until 2002-2004, for an average of 11 years. In total, nearly 370 deaths from heart disease and heart attacks such as angina or myocardial infarction were reported during the study.
Thus, the researchers found that people working overtime, generally 3 or 4 hours of overtime per day, were more affected by heart problems than employees working between 7 and 8 hours.
“Overtime is associated with an increased risk of accidents related to heart problems, independent of classic risk factors. These results suggest that overtime is harmful to the health of the heart,” said the authors of the study.
