Heart attacks linked to jobs loss

Losing your job late in your career doubles the chance of suffering a heart attack or stroke, a study says. Yale University researchers studied 4,301 people aged 51 to 61 who were working in 1992, the research, printed in the Occupational and Environmental Medicine journal claimed. Of the sample group over 10 years, there were 23 heart attacks and 13 strokes among the group of 582 who were forced out of a job. Lead researcher Dr William Gallo said: "For many individuals, late career job loss is an exceptionally stressful experience, with the potential for provoking numerous undesirable outcomes. I don't think it is necessarily because of the age, but rather related to the problems people over 50 have finding jobs of equivalent standard because of the ageism in the workplace. "Based on our results, the true costs of unemployment exceed the obvious economic costs and include substantial health consequences as well." In total, 202 had heart attacks and 140 had strokes from all the groups studied, which included those who had lost their jobs involuntarily, retired, taken a temporary break from work or were still employed. Once risk factors such as diabetes, smoking, obesity and high blood pressure were taken into account, the risk of the involuntary job loss group having a heart attack after losing their job was 2.5% and a stroke 2.4%.