Staying late for even one or two hours can be enough to have an impact on stroke risk, according to research.
Clock-watchers are at less risk of a potentially fatal stroke or heart attack.
The data on more than 500,000 men and women from the US, Europe and Australia revealed that the longer people worked, the more likely they were to have a stroke. Risk level was compared with that of people working a typical 35 to 40-hour week.
Working 41 to 48 hours a week was associated with a 10% risk increase, which rose higher as the hours mounted up. Working 49 to 54 hours pushed up the chances of a stroke by 27% and 55 or more hours raised the risk by a third.
“For all OECD countries, a mean of 12% of employed men and 5% of employed women work more than 50 hours per week.
“Although some countries have legislation for working hours – eg, the EU Working Time Directive gives people the right to limit their average working time to 48 hours per week – it is not always implemented. Therefore, that the length of a working day is an important determinant mainly for stroke, but perhaps also for coronary heart disease, is an important finding.”