Job stress can boost your risk of heart disease, but a new study finds that living a healthy lifestyle can significantly reduce that risk.
 

To reach their findings, researchers analyzed data from more than 102,000 adults, aged 17 to 70, in the UK, France, Belgium, Sweden and Finland. Lifestyles were ranked as one of three categories -- healthy, moderately unhealthy or unhealthy -- based on habits such as smoking, alcohol consumption, weight, and whether or not the participants were active or more sedentary.

Almost 16 percent of the subjects said that they suffered from job stress. Over the course of a decade, the rate of coronary artery disease was 18.4 per 1,000 for people with job stress and 14.7 per 1,000 for those without job stress. However, people with an unhealthy lifestyle had a significantly higher 10-year incidence rate (almost 31 per 1,000) compared to those with a healthy lifestyle (12 per 1,000).

Findings were published May 13 in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

"The risk of coronary artery disease was highest among participants who reported job strain and an unhealthy lifestyle; those with job strain and a healthy lifestyle had about half the rate of this disease," Dr. Mika Kivimaki, of the department of epidemiology and public health at University College London, and colleagues wrote in a new release.