Uticopa Blog

Strokes are one of the most common killers in Britain, affecting an estimated 150,000 people each year, of which more than 67,000 die.

But, stroke is such a variable disease, its severity and symptoms varying so much depending on the precise spot in the brain that the blood clot occurred.  Some sufferers are only mildly affected and can hope to try to regain any lost faculties by plenty of professional medical help.

However, what causes it in the first place?

Is there anything we can do to try and help ourselves?

Researchers now speculate that even our gender can have an effect on our chances of being a future sufferer.  A new study has shown that having a stressful job can double a man's chances of suffering a stroke, a new study has shown.

But women under pressure in the workplace do not seem to be at the same risk of stroke, scientists found.

The researchers speculate that the difference between the sexes could be because women approach stressful jobs differently to men or because traditionally more of them have worked part-time.

The study found that there were two major factors which determined how stressed employees felt at work, the demands of the job itself and the amount of control they felt over their day-to-day working life.

The findings, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal, show that those workers in "high-strain" jobs, which were both extremely demanding and over which they had little control, were twice as likely to suffer a stroke as those in "low-strain" positions.

This was the case after other factors such as age, occupation, alcohol consumption and exercise were taken into account.

However, when other health problems were included in the study, the link between stress and stroke lessened.
The researchers believe that stress has the strongest impact on otherwise healthy workers.

Although there was a small increased risk of stroke among highly stressed women, it was not enough to be statistically significant, according to Dr Akizumi Tsutsumi, from the University of Occupational and Environmental Health, in Fukuoka, Japan, who led the study.

How to safeguard yourself against getting a Stroke
The researchers believe that the findings indicate that some people can adapt to the strains of working in a pressurised situation better than others.
They recommend that employers try to minimise the amount of stress their employees face to preserve their future health.

"Because modification of work structures ... can be useful for stress reduction, our study has implications regarding the prevention of strokes among male workers," they conclude.

The latest

The study followed 6,553 workers for an average of 11 years, during which 147 of them suffered a stroke.

Strokes account for nine per cent of all deaths in men in Britain and 13 per cent of deaths in women.

More than 300,000 people are thought to be living with disabilities as a result of suffering a stroke.

Researchers studied more than 2,100 men born between 1938 and 1957 who had normal blood glucose levels.

They calculated the men's level of anxiety and stress at the beginning of the study and then again eight to 10 years later.

The results, published in the journal Diabetic Medicine, show that men with the highest levels of stress were 2.2 times more likely to develop diabetes than those with the lowest levels.

Latest analysis

The current economic mess has resulted in more and more men now having to accept part-time working or face redundancy. 

The small glimmer of hope, here, for our health is that part-time means less stress means less danger of Stroke.