People with high blood pressure who experience high levels of work-related stress and difficulty sleeping are up to three times more likely to die of cardiovascular disease than people with high blood pressure who don’t have either of those problems, according to a study published last week in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology . Although the study was conducted in Germany, its findings are also troubling for Americans. That’s because high blood pressure, work-related stress and sleep problems are all too common in the United States. Almost a third of American adults have high blood pressure, and more than a third don’t get enough sleep, government research has shown. Job-related stress is even more ubiquitous. In a survey of American professionals taken last October, more than three-quarters of the respondents (76 percent) said stress at work was bad enough to have had a negative effect on their personal relationships, and two-thirds (66 percent) said it had caused ...
