外刊阅读 | 国家地理 | 长时间工作会对你的身体造成什么影响？

The challenge is this: Under existing antitrust law, showing that companies A and B used algorithm C to raise prices isn’t enough; you need to show that there was some kind of agreement between companies A and B, and you need to allege some specific factual basis that the agreement existed before you can formally request evidence of it. 

难点在于：根据现有的反垄断法，仅仅证明公司A和公司B使用算法C来提高价格是不够的；你需要证明公司A和公司B之间存在某种协议，并且在你正式要求提供该协议的证据之前，你需要指控一些具体的、该协议存在的事实依据。

What working long hours does to your body

长时间工作会对你的身体造成什么影响

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Increased stress. Anxiety. Lower back pain. High blood pressure. If you’ve been working long hours at the office, then you might be intimately acquainted with some of the ways that overwork can have an impact on your health.But even as debate rages over whether it’s time to switch to a four-day workweek, some workplaces are headed the other direction: In July, Greece passed legislation allowing some employers to mandate a six-day workweek, while Samsung is requiring its executives to work a six-day week. This raises the question of what impact working long hours has on the body.

In 2021, the World Health Organization and International Labor Organization released a report that looked at the health risks of overwork. The report found that working long hours, defined as more than 55 hours a week, was responsible for 745,000 deaths from stroke and heart disease in 2016—a 29 percent increase since 2000. “There’s sufficient data to show that excessive work is the first occupational disease in the world,” says Alexis Descatha, a researcher at the Hospital and University of Angers-Inserm, based in France. As research is showing, even a 40-hour workweek, which has long been upheld as the standard for work-life balance, may not be as good for our health as we once thought.   

The health effects of overwork can be both direct and indirect. The stress associated with working long hours can have a direct impact on your health, by keeping your body in a constant state of fight-or-flight. This in turn leads to raised cortisol levels, which affects blood sugar levels, and alters the immune system.Over time, if this stress becomes chronic, it can lead to a number of health issues, such as high blood pressure, headaches, anxiety, depression, digestive issues, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, or sleep disturbances.  

How much sitting is too much? As Buffey notes, the tipping point seems to be somewhere around eight to 10 hours a day, with sedentary time greater than 11 hours leading to a much higher risk of developing health issues. For workers who follow up their sedentary time at work with sedentary activities such as watching TV during their free time, this can quickly add up to greater than eight hours a day.  

Office workers are also at a higher risk for certain overuse injuries, such as neck or lower back pain, due to sitting for long hours every day. “Sitting is a stressful position for your spine,” says Ryan Steiner, a physical therapist at the Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio. These health issues can be offset by exercise, with the risks noticeably decreasing in people who get an average of 150 to 300 minutes of physical activity a week. These effects can also be offset by taking short breaks throughout the day, whether it’s walking for a few minutes or shifting to a standing desk.  

Journal：Nationalgeographic(August 2, 2024)

Title：What working long hours does to your body

Category：Health

As it turns out, when it comes to working to live, rather than living to work, we all stand to benefit from a shorter, more flexible workweek.

事实证明，当我们为了生活而工作，而不是为了工作而生活时，更短、更灵活的工作周对我们所有人都有好处。

For people working in manual labor, however, the increased physical activity can work against them, a phenomenon known as the physical activity paradox.

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