Choose job wisely and stay away from strokes!

Zee Media Bureau

New Delhi: Now its time to ponder on the kind of career you are planning to follow as it will decide the health of your heart in the long run.

A recent study presented in the American Heart Association's Epidemiology/Lifestyle 2016 meetings revealed that workers in sales, office support or service occupation were more prone to heart diseases and stroke risks than the one in management or professional jobs.

The study involved 5,566 male and female workers with minimum 45 years of age and with no history of stokes and heart diseases. The researchers analyzed seven modifiable risk factors i.e. blood pressure, total cholesterol, blood glucose, smoking status, body mass, physical activity, and diet, derived from the American Heart Association's "Life's Simple 7".

And the major findings of the study were:

1. Transport/material moving workers:

22% were smokers (having highest rate of smoking among all the occupations).

2. Sales, office and administrative support employees:

69% had poor eating habits. 68% of sales employees did not have ideal cholesterol level. 89% of office and administrative support did not have ideal score for physical activities.

3. Food preparation and serving employees:

More than 79% of these employees are diagnosed with poor diet quality.

4. Protective service workers:

About 90% of police, firefighters are suffering from overweight or obesity, 77% of them did not have ideal cholesterol level, and 35 % had high blood pressure.

5. Management/professionals:

In all, this categories of employees showed better signs in cardiovascular healths than any other categories. One third of them had ideal body mass, 75% were at least active and just 6% were smokers. But about 72% of white collar professionals employed in business and finance works had poor eating habits.

Workers earned ideal scores if without medicines, their blood pressure readings were lower than 120/80 mm Hg; total cholesterol was below 200 mg/dL; and/or blood glucose was lower than 100 mg/dL while fasting or 140 without fasting.