Work Load and Coronary Heart Disease

The concept of daily life stress, particularly stress due to work load or “job stress,” seems to be embedded in the socio-cultural setting of industrialized populations in such a way that it is self explanatory for all kinds of sustained illness, such as a myocardial infarction. The possible relationship between stress and coronary heart disease is regularly publized by the mass media. On the other hand, prospective studies of coronary heart disease were started more than 25 years ago, but little attention was paid to stress; the possible relationship between stress and coronary heart disease (CHD) has been flatly denied because of the difficulty in defining the term, and on account of two examples, which seemingly negate the relationship: the “stress-free” Finnish lumberjacks having a very high incidence of CHD opposed to the “stressful” Japanese with a rather low CHD incidence. The low epidemiologic interest in job stress as a risk factor for CHD is counterbalanced by the numerous animal and human experimental and clinical studies carried out since Selye developed his three-phased stress concept (58).