Working more than 8hrs a day ups heart disease risk by 80pc

London - Working more than eight hours a day raises the risk of heart disease by up to 80 percent, a new study has revealed.

Researchers said that long working hours could be condemning thousands of employees to heart attacks and strokes.

The warning follows analysis of 12 studies dating back as far as 1958, involving a total of 22,000 people from around the world.

The analysis, by scientists at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, found that those whose working days that were longer than the traditional eight hours had a 40 to 80 per cent greater chance of heart disease.

The size of the increase varied depending on how each study was carried out.

The effects were more pronounced when participants were asked how long they worked for – but when researchers closely monitored working hours, the increased risk of heart disease was closer to 40 percent.

Lead researcher Dr Marianna Virtanen said the effects could be due to “prolonged exposure to stress.”

Other triggers could be poor eating habits and lack of exercise due to restricted leisure time.

Middle-aged workers putting in 55 hours or more a week had poorer brain function than those clocking up no more than 40 hours, with lower scores on tests to measure intelligence, short-term memory and word recall.

Britons work some of the longest hours in Europe, with full-time employees averaging 42.7 a week.

Those in Germany typically work for 42 hours, while Danes do 39.1.

It estimated that more than five million people a year in Britain work unpaid extra hours to hang on to their jobs.

But the long-term toll on workers’ health could be devastating, the new research suggests.

“There are several potential mechanisms that may underlie the association between long working hours and heart disease,” the Daily Mail quoted Dr Virtanen as saying in a report on the findings.

In addition to prolonged exposure to psychological stress, she said other triggers could be raised levels of the stress hormone cortisol, poor eating habits and lack of physical activity due to restricted leisure time.