The bad boss as a health hazard
If you think your boss is making your blood pressure soar, you may be right. A study of 28 health-care workers found that their blood pressure rose enough to increase their risk of heart disease on days when they worked for a boss they felt was unfair.
Researchers selected 28 people from a pool of female nursing assistants, 13 of whom worked for two supervisors with different management styles.
A control group of 15 women worked for either the same supervisors or two bosses who were similar. None of the participants knew the purpose of the study, and the supervisors remained anonymous to the researchers.
For three working days, the nursing assistants wore monitors that recorded their blood pressure every 30 minutes for 12 hours. They also kept diaries of the day’s events.
On days spent working for a boss they thought was unfair, the assistants’ systolic blood pressure increased about 13 points on average and their diastolic increased 6 points. (That increase is large enough to increase the risk of coronary heart disease by 16% and the risk of stroke by 38%, the researchers say.)
When the assistants worked for a boss they thought of favorably -- one who provided feedback and praise, showed trust and respect and was consistent and impartial -- their blood pressure decreased slightly. The control group had only a three-point increase in its average systolic pressure and no change in diastolic blood pressure.
“This study has taught me that we need to reflect on how we treat others, particularly those over whom we hold an element of power,” said Nadia Wager of Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College in England. “It was alarming to see that even subtle, less-than-favorable interpersonal cues could have a dramatic effect on an individual’s physiological functioning.”
The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
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Vegetarians may not be getting enough vitamin B-12
German researchers have found that eating eggs and dairy doesn’t protect vegetarians from B-12 deficiency.
The researchers analyzed blood samples for various measures of vitamin B-12 from two groups of healthy vegetarians (29 vegans and 66 vegetarians who ate eggs and/or dairy products) and one group of 79 meat eaters. Almost all the vegans had B-12 deficiency, while two out of three of those who ate eggs and or dairy had low levels of the vitamin. Only 5% of the meat eaters were deficient.
A B-12 deficiency can take years to develop, but studies such as this one show that it increases homocysteine levels, a risk factor for heart disease. It also increases the risk of neural tube defects in newborns, congenital heart defects, dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Lifelong vegetarians need supplements to achieve a normal B-12 level, says lead author Wolfgang Herrmann of Saarland University in Homburg, Germany.
The study was published in the July issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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10-year interval for colon cancer tests questioned
Intervals as long as 10 years between colon cancer tests may be too long. In a new study, precancerous growths or cancer were found in 3.1% of people who had had negative sigmoidoscopy exams three years earlier.
Although only 0.8% of participants had advanced precancerous polyps or cancer, about 80% of the cancers were in a region that had been adequately examined the first time, says the lead author, Dr. Robert E. Schoen, an associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.
The current five-year interval between sigmoidoscopies should not be changed, Schoen says, but results may call into question the alternatively recommended 10-year interval for a colonoscopy. (A colonoscopy involves the upper and lower segments of the colon; a sigmoidoscopy involves only the lower part.)
“Among the questions that need to be examined is whether a similar incidence of advanced lesions would be detected on a repeat exam with colonoscopy, and whether a number of these advanced polyps would have become cancer if we waited 10 years,” says Schoen.
The study, which involved 9,000 participants in the ongoing Prostate, Lung, Colorectal & Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial, was published in Wednesday’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Assn.
