Healthy people with stressful jobs who work long hours but get little satisfaction from what they do have twice the risk of dying from heart disease as satisfied employees, according to a study.

Job stress has been known to trigger heart problems in people who already have cardiovascular disease. Now Finnish scientists have now shown that even in healthy people the pressures of work can take their toll.

Obesity, high blood pressure, lack of exercise, smoking and being overweight contribute to heart disease -- a leading killer in many industrialized countries.

But Mika Kivimaki, of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, and his colleagues, who studied the medical histories of 812 healthy Finnish men and women in a metal industry company over 25 years, said job stress also plays an important role.

Workers who had the highest job-related stress levels at the start of the study were more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to the study published in The British Medical Journal.

Work stress involves too much work as well as a lack of satisfaction and feeling undervalued and unappreciated.

Many people work long hours but if the effort is rewarding the stress is minimized. Kivimaki said job pressure is damaging when being overworked is combined with little or no control, unfair supervision and few career opportunities.

The British Heart Foundation said the results support earlier research showing that people in jobs with low control, such as manual workers, could be at greater risk of heart disease than other employees.

"It is advisable for people to try to minimize levels of stress at work and for employers to allow people to have more control at work and to be rewarded for their successes," the foundation said in a statement.

研究表明：在健康人群中，那些工作时间很长但是却对工作现状不满的人死于心脏疾病的几率是正常人的两倍。

众所周知，对于心血管功能不好的人来说，太大的工作压力更容易引起心血管疾病。但最近芬兰科学家的研究结果告诉我们，即便对于健康人来说，工作压力仍有可能夺去他们宝贵的生命。

在许多发达的工业化国家，心脏病是夺走人们健康的头号杀手，而引起心脏病的因素有很多，包括肥胖、高血压、缺乏锻炼、抽烟甚至体重超重等等。

然而，在过去的25年里，芬兰职业卫生研究所米卡·基维迈基和他的同事们对芬兰一家金属公司的812名健康芬兰职工进行了长期的病史跟踪研究。结论是：工作压力过大同样也是导致心脏病发作的重要因素之一。

基维迈基将自己的研究结果发表在《英国医学杂志》上，文中他提到，他在研究初期发现，工作压力过大的人群死于心脏病的几率是正常人的两倍之多。

工作压力包含很多方面，如工作量过大、对工作感到不满意、或在工作中不得志等。

有时经常会出现这样一种情况：许多人工作量也相当大，但是工作很有成效，这种情况下工作压力就会相对减轻。基维迈基说工作量过大的人如果遇上差劲的管理、糟糕的上司和黯淡的工作前景，工作压力就会骤增，对健康的破坏力也同时加强。

英国心脏基金会认为基维迈基的这一调查与基金会早前的一项研究结果一致。在那份研究中他们得出的结论是：在工作控制较低的行业工作的人，如体力劳动者，得心脏病的几率就明显高于其他行业。

基金会的一份文件中这样写道："建议人们平时在工作当中要量力而行，尽量将工作压力降到最小程度。同时雇主们也要尽量减轻员工的工作压力，改善管理体系并及时论功行赏。"