
Long hours link to dementia risk - kqr2
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7909464.stm
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klahnako
From the article: "This should say to employers that insisting people work
long hours is actually not good for your business"

Wrong! As a business, you should overwork you employees. When the dementia
starts affecting performance you fire them. This way you can privatize the
benefits (long hours) and socialize the losses (some else takes care of them).
Anything else would not be good for profits.

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triplefox
You lose the knowledge your workers acquired on the job; a new hire cannot
offer you that.

So this only works if you are in a franchise business where everyone works to
a script and does not innovate, develop long-term relationships, or perform an
important leadership function.

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bd
Alternative explanation: people whose mental skills kept declining (for some
unrelated reason) worked longer hours to compensate for a loss of productivity
due to such decline.

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TomOfTTB
Wow. Next they'll be telling us that people who lift weights excessively are
susceptible to muscle strain.

[I wish I had an eye rolling smiley to put here]

Maybe I'm just simplifying things too much but it seems to me that the average
work week we have now evolved over time because it seemed to produce optimal
results. Meaning pushing yourself to work extra hours would be considered
excessive and would in turn adversely affect those parts of your body that you
are using during your work (namely your brain).

As for the rest of the article's conclusion (shorter sleeping hours, excessive
alcohol use, etc...) it would seem those would be a result of the reason
behind the excessive work. People generally over work for stress causing
reasons (fear of losing their job, trying to start a business, etc...) So any
symptoms of stress can probably be attributed to that and not the over work
(which is in itself a symptom)

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jodrellblank
"than those with normal working hours"

Normal working hours weren't designed to be optimal for health - do shorter
than normal hours correlate with lower risk?

