WLong hours of health issues, from health issues, come from a lot of stress to troubled sleep, heart disease, and mental disorders such as anxiety and depression.
It may even cause changes in the brain, according to what a new said a report Posted in Vocational and environmental medicine. The researchers from Korea found that people who work regularly have long hours have significant differences in the brain compared to people who have worked less.
Wanhyung Lee, from the Department of Preventive Medicine at Chung-ANG University in Seoul, studied 110 health care workers-some of them worked more than 52 hours a week, which is under Korean law in excess work, and some work less. All of them were magnetic resonance imaging that allowed scientists to analyze the differences in the size and concentration of some brain tissue.
People who have been returned have shown changes in 17 brain regions compared to those who made typical hours. These differences included areas responsible for executive jobs such as logical thinking, as well as managing feelings.
He tells me that the results surprised him – partly because they point out that the brain is changing in response to stress and anxiety, with some possible negative consequences. “We expected the prolonged stress to affect the excessive work on the structure of the brain, but finding an increasing volume in some areas of the brain was somewhat unexpected,” he wrote in an e -mail to time. “Our results indicate a possible nervous adaptation response, which means that the brain may initially try to compensate for increasing cognitive and emotional demand. These amazing results confirm the complexity of how the brain responds to prolonged professional stress.”
Lee tells that progress in brain imaging now makes it possible to discover small differences in size. “These technological breakthroughs have enabled researchers to explore the invisible biological changes caused by prolonged stress or excessive work burdens, and thus opened a completely new dimension in occupational and environmental health research.”
Read more: When do you go to the emergency room for urgent care?
The changes set by his team include areas of the brain responsible for things such as memory, decision -making, attention, planning, and problem solving. “The changes here may affect a person’s ability to manage tasks efficiently, make decisions, and keep focus,” he says.
Differences in other areas can affect the extent of people organizing emotions; The changes they saw may indicate less emotional stability, increased anxiety, and problems in the interpretation of emotional signals or personal communication management.
Will it reduce the reduction of work burden or the opposite of some of these changes? He tells me that it is too early to know if these amendments are permanent. “The longitudinal studies will be necessary to understand whether these structural changes in the brain are contrary to the opposite or continue in the long run.” It is planned to follow this study with long -term data and the largest population to determine what is happening for these changes in the brain over time, and whether setting the work burden can reduce or reversal.
Meanwhile, there are things that people can do to relieve some of the negative effects of exhaustion on their health, even if they cannot control their hours. Getting enough sleep and physical activity can help, as well as tension with vigilance or relaxation techniques. But for me he says that the burden should not be entirely dependent on employees. Companies should limit excessive working hours, provide stress management resources, and enhance the balance between work and life “to protect brain health and the productivity of their employees in the long run.”
