How working long hours actually affects your health

Now working from home has become the norm for the majority of the nation, it’s easy for boundaries to get blurred. 

When our home offices are often our living rooms and bedrooms, it’s hard to distinguish work life and home life.

Not to mention, the lack of commute means it’s difficult to pinpoint when your day exactly ends. 

This means it’s easy to slip into the habit of working longer, when we really should be saying ‘no’ to overtime. After all, there will always be emails to send and extra bits to look over. 

But new research has uncovered some shocking statistics in this area, namely that long working hours may be killing hundreds of thousands of people a year.

The first global study of its kind showed 745,000 people died in 2016 from strokes and heart disease due to long hours.

It’s pretty morbid stuff, and an important reminder of the impact of long hours on our physical health.

So, what do we need to be aware of? And what can we do about this slightly horrifying knowledge? We spoke to the experts to find out.

Less physical movement

Lauren Dudley, founder of creative agency Auxo, says the new WFH lifestyle the pandemic presented dramatically increased her working hours. 

Now, she often works 11-hour days, as this allows her to focus and dedicate extra time to her six-month old business.

However, all this extra work is taking its toll on Lauren’s body.

Lauren tells Metro.co.uk: ‘Physically, I have much less time for exercise or even, if I’m honest, just moving my body. Sometimes I get to Wednesday afternoon and realise I haven’t left the house since Sunday. 

‘This and the lack of personal time naturally does have a knock-on effect on my mental wellbeing – so I try to be incredibly strict with myself.

‘I notice the warning signs (“fuzzy” head, as I call it) and clear my schedule to reflect that as immediately as I can. That’s the perk of working from home.’

We all know that having an active lifestyle is important for our health, but the stationary nature of being at home all day is acting as a barrier for achieving this. 

Dr Angela Rai, a GP at The London General Practice, says: ‘Staying sedentary and working for long hours at a desk can affect our health in many ways.

‘With the recent lockdown and individuals working from home with work areas that are not ergonomically designed, or just sitting with a poor posture at a desk for many hours, can lead to neck and back problems.’

This lack of activity and poor posture can lead to muscle tightening and stress on joints – as well as headaches and fatigue.

Increased stress

Sophie, who runs her own PR agency, explains one problem with working from home is that there is no longer a visible line between work and rest.

She says: ‘The lights don’t go off and the office doesn’t get locked up – instead that screen stays with you. Your laptop often becomes a TV screen with work notifications flashing through and your phone – which is still by your side as a virtual social life – is a constant reminder of things you need to do. 

‘As a managing director, especially in the world of media, you expect to be contacted out of hours – but the increase in messages on communication platforms that expect an instant reply (often with a question that could have waited until the morning) since the start of the pandemic is terrible. 

‘It’s definitely had a very visible impact on my health. My sleep has been impacted and I’ve suffered from migraines, too, as I’m not able to wind down in an evening.

‘Anxiety levels have increased, too, such as the guilt of being pulled in too many directions, which I’m now taking medication for. I’ve even cracked teeth from grinding my teeth in the night from stress.’

Working long hours causes physical and mental stress on the mind and body, and this results in excess cortisol production – which can lead to anxiety.

Dr Jane Leonard explains the science behind this in a little more detail.

She says: ‘Cortisol is a hormone that is responsible for our fight or flight response.

‘We need it to function in stressful situations but prolonged production of cortisol, due to chronic stress, puts excessive strain on our adrenal glands that produce it that cause adrenal fatigue.’

Heart problems

Dr Paul McLaren, a psychiatrist at Priory Wellbeing Centre, stresses that sitting around for hours on end can also be bad news for our hearts.

He says: ‘Long hours can cover a multitude of sins. The effects on physical health will depend on what a person is doing, but these days it means sitting down for long hours for many. That threatens cardiovascular health – so coronary heart disease and strokes.

‘Our bodies were not built to sit for 12 hours in a chair.’

This is something backed up by Dr Paul Ettlinger, a GP at The London General Practice, who says that people can even experience heart irregularities from working extra hours.

He says: ‘Studies have shown that working long hours increases our risk of having abnormal heart rhythm such as atrial fibrillation and therefore a stroke.’

Dr Paul says this risk is 1.4 times greater if people work 55 hours or more a week, compared to those who work 35-40 hours.

Increase in alcohol dependency (and the health problems that go with it)

The physical and mental demands of putting more hours in at work can also mean we turn to a nightly glass of wine to take the edge off.

Psychiatrist Dr Niall Campbell says: ‘High and continued stress frequently leads to a person leaning more on alcohol and drugs, to self-medicate for stress, to a dangerous and damaging degree.’

And naturally, this can cause all kinds of future health problems.

He adds: ‘Increased alcohol increases your chances of developing all sorts of serious and potentially fatal conditions, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, cirrhosis, dementia and depression.’

Deterioration of eyes

Extra hours spent glued to a screen will also have a detrimental impact on our eyes. 

Sharon Copeland, expert optician at Feel Good Contacts, explains why it’s important to understand the consequences of too much screen time – and the problems we should be looking out for.

She says: ‘Education on the signs of too much screen time is key to battling eye conditions caused by it in the digital age.

‘Computer Vision Syndrome has a number of different symptoms ranging from eye fatigue to headaches. If you notice yourself suffering from these it’s really key to get in touch with your optician, who can decide whether you need further examinations in order to get a proper diagnosis.’

Burnout

We often think of burnout as mental exhaustion, but it can take very real, physical forms, too.

Simply put, it’s a sign that we need to give our bodies a break.

Dr Maria Kordowicz, head of learning at the Social Innovation Partnership, says: ‘Human beings require rest and respite and this is something that has fallen by the wayside with lockdown digital intrusion and back to back online meetings in some industries. 

‘This rate of output is not sustainable in the long run and we are seeing cases of burnout related to the intensity of not only working hours during lockdown, but household, caring responsibilities and of course the fears and anxieties resulting from a global pandemic. 

‘We also need to be mindful of the need for active rest and its impact on our emotional and physical wellbeing  – outdoor walks, being around nature, recreational sports we enjoy.

‘We are not designed to be desk and screen-bound day in, day out.’

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