• Telecommuting Can Save Your Life
Posted by Tom Harnish on May 11th, 2008
We wrote a few days ago about a study that showed that people who work at home are healthier.
In fact, there’s a study that suggests that if you work from home you’ll live longer too.
The first clue came in the early 1970s when a study of 18,000 male British civil servants, called the Whitehall Study, found that the lowest ranking workers had the highest rate of premature death. That was a surprise because conventional wisdom had it that stress from workload and responsibility was a killer. Turns out it was how much control an employee had over the work he did.
A few months ago a follow up on the study revealed fresh details of the now firmly established links between low job control, stress, and cardiovascular disease
About a third of the risk for heart disease came from poor diet, smoking, and lack of exercise. But fully two thirds was a by-product of a constant state of extreme alert–fight or flight mode. Chronic exposure to stress hormones, it turns out, weakens you heart’s ability to respond to changing demands.
Telecommuting, working from home, offers a major dose of control over your work-life balance, as does running your own business or working as a freelancer.