A friend of mine passed an article to me from The Wall Street Journal. It was an article about how stress raises cholesterol. My initial mental reaction was, ‘Duh, what have I been talking about for the past 10 years?’ Teaching moment: Pride comes before the fall.
I was all proud of myself that I was ahead of the curve from a major publication. As I looked for the references in The Wall Street Journal article, one was from back in 1958. This information that lifestyle (not just bad bugs, bad luck, or bad genes) affects health outcomes was being quantified 20 years before I was born. More specifically, they were looking at how stress affects cholesterol and blood clotting.
The 1958 study was titled ‘Changes in the Serum Cholesterol and Blood Clotting Time in Men Subjected to Cyclic Variation of Occupational Stress.’ It is published in the journal Circulation by the American Heart Association. The intro to the study states the following:
Accountants were selectively chosen as a self-controlled group for studying effects of cyclic occupational stress upon serum cholesterol and blood clotting time, since their routine work schedule is interrupted by urgent tax deadlines, associated with severe occupational stress. Forty male accountants (age 28 to 56) were bled biweekly for serum cholesterol and monthly for blood clotting time from January to June 1957. Complete records also were kept of weight, exercise, diet, relative work load, and any exposure to unusual avocational stress. When studied individually, each subject’s highest serum cholesterol consistently occurred during severe occupational or other stress, and his lowest at times of minimal stress. The results could not be ascribed to any changes of weight, exercise, or diet. Marked acceleration of blood clotting time consistently occurred at the time of maximum occupational stress, in contrast to normal blood clotting during periods of respite. The possible implications of these results are discussed in relation to the problem of clinical coronary artery disease.
In the chart above, group A are ‘tax’ accountants. Group B is made up of ‘corporate’ accountants. These are plots of cholesterol levels tested in 2 week intervals from January to June. Of particular interest is that the corporate accountants had higher cholesterol levels and a higher reported stress level in January than in April. But overall, it’s evident the spike in cholesterol correlates with the as the April 15 tax deadlines.