Stress is nothing positive for our body, we already know that. Now, a study carried out by researchers from the French National Institute for Safety Research (INRS) and the University of Montreal (Canada) has found a direct relationship between continuous or prolonged stress at work and the development of certain types Of cancer.
Research confirms that prolonged exposure to job stress increases men’s chances of colon, lung, stomach, rectal, and non-Hodgkin lymphoma.
Depending on the job, the most dangerous professions are : firefighter, industrial and aerospace engineer, foreman, auto mechanic, and railroad equipment mechanic. Responsibilities, interpersonal conflicts, traffic problems, job insecurity, financial problems or working conditions are among the main causes of stress.
On average, the study participants had held four jobs and some of them even reached a dozen jobs during their working lives. Among the conclusions of the research, it stands out that men who had been exposed between 15 and 30 years of work stress or more than 30 years, were more likely to develop certain types of cancer. Of course, if the work stress was less than 15 years, this association between cancer and stress at work did not occur.
“One of the major limitations of previous cancer studies is that none have evaluated work-related stress throughout the entire professional history, preventing us from estimating the role of the duration of exposure to stress at work on the onset of cancer. Our study shows the importance of measuring stress at different moments in the work history ”, the authors comment in a statement.
The study has been published in the journal Preventive Medicine.
