Conscious Choice: Workplace Blues

January 2008 | Healthy Living :: Body Talk

Workplace Blues

By Liz Barker

Work got you down? You’re not alone. A new study from the University of Rochester School of Medicine has linked depression to job stress, lack of social support in the workplace, and lack of decision authority on the job.

Looking at data on more than 24,000 people, researchers found that nearly 5 percent of participants — 3.4 percent of the men and 6 percent of the women — met the criteria for having a major episode of depression. Among women, lower levels of social support and lack of decision authority were associated with depression, while men showed a stronger link between depression and high job strain, low job security and increased psychological demands.

Depression in the workplace is a “major public health problem that requires intervention yet remains under-recognized and under treated,” according to the study’s authors. “In some jobs, a high level of work stress is expected, but if it is coupled with other risk factors, the risk of depression increases,” says lead author Emma Robertson Blackmore, Ph.D. However, she notes, “having good social support at work — co-workers or an understanding supervisor to talk to who can provide practical or emotional support — appears protective.”

Capers to the Rescue

Tiny and tangy, capers may add more than savory goodness to your pasta or smoked salmon. In a study from the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers discovered that the Mediterranean seasoning may be loaded with cancer-preventing and heart-protecting compounds.

To test the health effects of capers (the flower buds of a small, spiny shrub), the researchers added caper extracts to grilled ground-turkey and analyzed the byproducts formed during simulated digestion. According to their findings, capers may stop the formation of certain digested-meat byproducts that have been associated with an increased risk of cancer and heart disease. Even the small amounts of capers typically used to flavor meals may deliver a significant health benefit, especially for people whose diets are high in fat and red meat, the study’s authors note.

Teatime for Healthy Bones

Got tea? Recent research suggests that the green and black variety may do your bones good. For a study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers surveyed 275 elderly women (ages 70 to 85) about how much tea they drank. At the study’s start and at a five-year follow-up, the participants had the bone mineral density in their hips measured. The results not only showed that bone density was higher in tea drinkers than in non-tea-drinkers, but also indicated that tea drinkers had less loss of bone.

Although the researchers didn’t determine how tea might help keep bones strong, they did find that tea-drinking seemed to have a greater impact on bone than either coffee intake or physical activity.

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