Work-related stress due to horrible bosses can jeopardize a person's health and result in chronic illnesses, according to a recent study.
This kind of relationship with a boss, along with long working hours and poor office atmosphere have become one of the leading causes of chronic stress and inflammation in the body. The study confirmed that working with a highly negative boss for several years can indeed cause serious harm to employees and this is not usually worth one's pay. Researchers involved in the study also found that chronic stress causes the cells in the body to become exposed to infection primarily because the body's immune activities changes. These findings were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The research involved testing blood samples from people living in poor areas and found that similarly primed immune cells were present in these people who were usually stressed out. "The cells share many of the same characteristics in terms of their response to stress," said Dr John Sheridan, associate director of Ohio State University's Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research, and co-lead author of the study.
"There is a stress-induced alteration in the bone marrow in both our mouse model and in chronically stressed humans that selects for a cell that's going to be pro-inflammatory. So what this suggests is that if you're working for a really bad boss over a long period of time, that experience may play out at the level of gene expression in your immune system," he added. Mind-body connection was established throughout the research which also confirms that indeed, stress is directly associated with health problems. But how exactly it can harm a person's health has not yet been identified by the researchers.
