Hard working women face ‘alarming’ cancer and heart disease risk, doctors warn
Shock study finds workaholic ladies could pay a heavy health toll for chasing their professional ambitions
Women who work gruelling hours may have to "pay a steep price", doctors have claimed.
A worrying new study has found workaholic ladies who spend three decades or more slogging through 60 hour weeks TRIPLE their chances of contracting cancer, heart disease, diabetes and arthritis.
The risk level "takes a decidedly bad turn above 50 hours" and even women working a relatively moderate 40 hours increase their chances of developing deadly diseases.
The research is likely to prove highly controversial among feminists, who have spent the past century fighting to achieve equality with men.
However, blokes appear to be able to work long hours without suffering the same consequences.
Allard Dembe, professor of health services management at Ohio State University, said females faced a double whammy of danger because they often had to work intense hours whilst taking on the "lion's share of family responsibility".
"Women - especially women who have to juggle multiple roles - feel the effects of intensive work experiences and that can set the table for a variety of illnesses and disability," .
"People don't think that much about how their early work experiences affect them down the road.
"Women in their 20s, 30s and 40s are setting themselves up for problems later in life."
Dembe and his team analysed data from interview with 7,500 people to establish a relationship between the number of hours work and the likelihood of suffering disease.
He said the "striking" results showed a "clear and strong relationship between long hours and heart disease, cancer, arthritis and diabetes".
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Men who worked long hours of between 41 to 50 hours a week were more likely to suffer from arthritis than their lazier counterparts, but actually had a LOWER risk of heart disease, lung disease and depression than people who worked 40 hours or less.
"The early onset and identification of chronic diseases may not only reduce individuals' life expectancy and quality of life, but also increase health care costs in the long term," Dembe wrote in his paper, which is published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
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