Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Working hard can kill tired people

Scientists suggest that working hard when fatigued not only increases the blood pressure but also raises the risk of heart attack.

According to a study published in the International Journal of Psychology, when exhausted individuals perceive a task as achievable and worth doing, they increase their effort to compensate for their diminished capability due to fatigue.

As a result, they experience exaggerated cardiovascular responses and are placed at a higher risk of developing serious health risks, including hypertension and heart disease.

University of Alabama at Birmingham psychologists believe blood pressure rises and remains elevated until the task is completed or interrupted because of being viewed as too difficult or impossible.

The study showed that moderately fatigued individuals have a greater blood pressure increase when completing easy tasks compared to more difficult ones, as they view the difficult jobs as impossible or too difficult to be worth the effort.

Findings reveal that highly fatigued individuals have low blood pressure increases when experiencing both easy and difficult task conditions, because they perceive even the easy tasks as too difficult for them to accomplish.

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