Swedish study identifies a major source of heart attacks

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@earthlink.net>]

http://www.weeklyworldnews.com/features/revelations_story.cfm?instance

id=50720



WORKING WITH IDIOTS CAN KILL YOU   Stress caused by dim-witted co-

workers may give you a fatal heart attack!   By KATE McCLARE   



STOCKHOLM -- Idiots in the office are just as hazardous to your 

health as cigarettes, caffeine or greasy food, an eye-opening new 

study reveals. In fact, those dopes can kill you!   Stress is one of 

the top causes of heart attacks -- and working with stupid people on 

a daily basis is one of the deadliest forms of stress, according to 

researchers at Sweden's Lindbergh University Medical Center.   The 

author of the study, Dr. Dagmar Andersson, says her team studied 500 

heart attack patients, and were puzzled to find 62 percent had 

relatively few of the physical risk factors commonly blamed for heart 

attacks.   "Then we questioned them about lifestyle habits, and 

almost all of these low-risk patients told us they worked with people 

so stupid they can barely find their way from the parking lot to 

their office. And their heart attack came less than 12 hours after 

having a major confrontation with one of these oafs.   "One woman had 

to be rushed to the hospital after her assistant shredded important 

company tax documents instead of copying them. A man told us he 

collapsed right at his desk because the woman at the next cubicle 

kept asking him for correction fluid -- for her computer monitor.   

"You can cut back on smoking or improve your diet," Dr. Andersson 

says, "but most people have very poor coping skills when it comes to 

stupidity -- they feel there's nothing they can do about it, so they 

just internalize their frustration until they finally explode."   

Stupid co-workers can also double or triple someone's work load, she 

explains. "Many of our subjects feel sorry for the drooling idiots 

they work with, so they try to cover for them by fixing their 

mistakes. One poor woman spent a week rebuilding client records 

because a clerk put them all in the 'recycle bin' of her computer and 

then emptied it -- she thought it meant the records would be recycled 

and used again."   Published on: August 1, 2003     





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