Long Hours at Work May Lead to Dementia

Hard work never hurt anyone, or so the adage goes, or did it? According to the latest research by Marianna Virtanen from the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, long hours at work can harm your brain:

Long working hours may raise the risk of mental decline and possibly dementia, research suggests.

The Finnish-led study was based on analysis of 2,214 middle-aged British civil servants.

It found that those working more than 55 hours a week had poorer mental skills than those who worked a standard working week.

The American Journal of Epidemiology study found hard workers had problems with short-term memory and word recall.

Link


Everyone who is "exempt" from overtime should encourage this research to be continued. Finally we can have what FDR promised us over 50 years ago.
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That isn't even dementia. Dementia is impaired mental processes due to brain damage or injury. They should have said impaired mental functioning, but not dementia. Also, correlation doesn't imply causation. I think this deserves an emoticon on my part: =P
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Well I'm not going to argue that this study is solid, but my personal opinion is that working monotonous jobs, doing the same thing over and over, to the exclusion of variety in life, getting enough time outdoors, in bed sleeping or not sleeping (wink), playing with your kids or writing that book or whatever--cannot be optimum for the human organism.

I know people have to do what they have to do, but it does not strike me as implausible that spending ten hours a day shuffling papers would atrophy the brain and curb vitality a bit. At another time in history, a typical day might look something like: prepare food, dig in the earth, tell stories around a fire, build something, etc. That picture, I think, engages more of the full human being rather than denying certain parts of it, as the common modern lifestyle could be argued to do.

This probably sounds kind of new agey, but whatever. Doing the same thing over and over, especially in a noncreative realm that doesn't have any direct personal meaning, for the majority of your waking life does not seem like the surest route to health and happiness.
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I want to know if this applies to all jobs across the board or just certain types. Office jobs? General labor? Doctors? Government? it's pretty vague.
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I'd like to see solid evidence for this, and have it factor in things like job satisfaction and genetic disposition, blah blah blah, over the course of a decade or so, which someone mentioned.

Either way, glad I'm a housewife.
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I have worked as a Civil Servant in Britain and I would love to know where they are finding some who do that many hours. I struggled to fill half many hours a week.
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"But my worry is that in a recession people will actually work longer hours. There will be a culture of "presenteeism" - people will go to work even if they are ill because they want to show commitment, and make sure they are not the next to be made redundant."

This is 100% the case where I work. Even though there is usually not 8 hours of work to do each day, everyone stays 12 hours or more each day purely for appearance.........
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Research and advancement in natural therapies have found safe solutions for treating dementia. A friend suggested Biogetica products T6 and VBC Pro which I ordered for immediately. Biogetica provides an admixture of homeopathic and ayurvedic formulations, which have shown therapeutic efficacy in cases of dementia. They improve blood circulation in the brain and help restore the cognitive functions. Additionally they help reduce anxiety, and act as nerve tonics.
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