Are you gaining too much weight and there’s no possible explanation for it? Are you stressed out from work? Well, looks like the two might have something in common. A new study has found that women who experience high pressure at work, tend to put on a lot of weight. Researchers conducted the study on more than 3800 women in Sweden. Lead author of the study, Sofia Klingberg, said, “We were able to see that high job demands played a part in women’s weight gain, while for men there was no association between high demands and weight gain.”
The researchers recruited a number of participants which included both men and women and conducted the study on them for over a period of 20 years where their conditions were investigated three times. These people were surveyed either from ages 30 to 50 or from ages 40 to 60. The participants were also asked questions about their work pace, psychological pressures, work timings, contradictory demands etc.
It was found that participants with less control over their working conditions gained as much as 10% more weight over the course of these years. This much was alike for both men and women. However, when women were studied as a collective it was found that high-pressure jobs led to a significant weight gain in women over these 20 years. They gained over 20% weight as compared to women in low-stress jobs.
“When it came to the level of demands at work, only the women were affected. We haven’t investigated the underlying causes, but it may conceivably be about a combination of job demands and the greater responsibility for the home that women often assume. This may make it difficult to find time to exercise and live a healthy life,” the researchers concluded. Stay tuned for more updates.