Feeling responsible for both work and home puts women's heart health at risk

(CP) - Women's heart health is put at risk when they juggle multiple priorities and the needs of others, a study suggests.

"There is no question that stress has a negative impact on our health," said Dr. Robert Nolan, a member of the research team and a spokesman for the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. "Women are often particularly affected," Nolan said. "There's often no room left to look after their own health needs. This has to change."

The researchers, led by Dr. Jan Angus of the University of Toronto, found that men in the study were more single-minded. At work, they thought mostly about work, unlike women who also thought about the busy evening ahead.

And men put their own health first, once they learned that they were at risk for cardiovascular disease, the study showed.

"Women in the study admitted that they needed to be more aware of their own health," said Angus. "They wanted to prioritize their own health by finding positive ways to relieve stress, spending more time being physically active and following a healthy diet."

Angus and her team held eight focus groups in urban, rural and northern Ontario to look at how people at risk of heart disease experience stress - and how some of these experiences can hurt heart health.

"We know it's hard for people to make changes in their health behaviours and stick to them. We wanted to find out why," Angus said. "We found that place - either physical locations or social positions - can be a support or a barrier to good heart health."

For instance, women had difficulty focusing on one place or situation at a time. They seemed to feel simultaneously responsible for events at both work and home, thereby increasing stress, the study found. Women also tended to put their family's needs ahead of their own.