Hi! Im a docter practising outside the united states. Well, personally speaking , life is very stressful. Doctors do have the highest number of suicides worldwide compared to any profession.
Its sad isnt it. THe Ppl you are talking about who died with stroke in their 40s well, it could be due to their high stress levels or even family tendency of stroke.
My high school tennis instructor was the most fit and strong person I knew. He collapsed one day in court with a massive heart attack.
All Im telling you that dietary habits can help us in the long run but the everyday tensed lifestyle(rat race), personal/family probs, inherited medical illnesses from the family well, thats up to our fate I guess.
I guess anybodys death is multi-factorial.
hope this helps,
tc!!
Zohra

Carbohydrates and cardio is a deadly combo

What a pistol! Thanks for the article, Tarlach.

Does that include dentists? I'd heard that they had the highest suicide rate.

I think I heard that air traffic controllers have the highest stress level of any job. How do their survival rates compare?

I can remember hearing those stats going back to the seventies and eighties. Psychiatrists and Police Officers are the other typical ones that crop up as perennial winners of the suicide rate claims. I'd wager overworked IT and Help desk staff could make the same claims. Many "professions" are completely ignored by those types of statistics, and lumped into overly broad categories like "clerical" and "small business". Anyone who honestly thinks a surgeon pulling down a six figure salary, has a more stressful existence than a single mother with a 2 hour commute to her minimum wage helldesk job is an elitist idiot.

Well if you put "overworked" in there, you could say that about anyone. I've had plenty of IT and help desk jobs and they've been quite cushy.



I've heard several times that happiness is only correlated with income up to a certain very low amount - a bit above the poverty line, I think - below which you have to constantly worry about basic needs. Once those basic needs are met (food, shelter, clothing), there is no relationship between income and stress.

Sardinians have good longevity and I think they eat a lot of meat and fat. Of course I think they proved that in their case it may be a genetic thing because they all come from the same old family or something.

I've heard that excuse before.

Cushier than being a surgeon with a six figure salary? Did you do that as well? Anyway, I'm happy for your jaded work history; I too have worked both and seen nothing but people with little or no security, who fret constantly about their bills, their hours, the time away from their family and the stress of their job. In fact every IT company I've worked at since the 80's has been on a constant cycle of dropping head count and increasing workload per employee until they reach they're close to their breaking point. The fact that people in lower and middle income jobs are "overworked" is the rule nowadays, given the current economic environment, I don't see the trend reversing anytime soon.



Really, I think that's ridiculous. It's the kind of fairy tale that someone who can take their children skiing in Vale, or to Disney World during the march break tells them self. Someone who has 3 cars in their garage, and savings enough to insure their children get a first class education, thinks "Oh, we have just as much stress as the poor, it's just terrible picking amongst these Ivy league schools darling, the decisions we have to make, the Cartier or the Rolex. Food, shelter, clothing indeed... yes heaven forbid if they need transportation, medicine, education, security, entertainment or any of the other niceties the rich take for granted, it may prove too "stressful" for them. Why they're probably better off not having a dentist, those visits are so stressful. Anyone who honestly believes that kind of crap should take their kids and try living in a trailer by the railway tracks, with one change of clothes and some government cheese to eat... Make sure you have a two hour bus ride to your minimum wage job, tell me then how stress free and happy you are.

In the immortal words of Sophie Tucker "I've been rich and I've been poor. Believe me, honey, rich is better."

There's kind of a lot in between those two extremes, Frankly. Obviously living in a trailer by the railroad tracks is below the level of basic security. I'm not so sure someone living in a modest apartment in a small Midwestern town is any less happy than a surgeon in an exurban McMansion in a major metropolitan area.

I think there is a level of wealth where worries about money disappear completely. David Bowie, for example, has said that he's reached that point. But I wouldn't be surprised if the number of people with that much wealth is so small that they didn't show up on the survey.

Some wealthy (and not-so-wealthy) people in the past couple decades have become interested in "downshifting," scaling back their lifestyle so they have money in the bank instead of money out front in the driveway. They're taking less stressful jobs with lower pay. I've met a few doctors who have scaled back to small private practices so they don't have to see as many patients and can take more time off. I don't think they're doing that for the money.

There can be other factors of course, it's possible for the rich person to have a more stressful, depressing life. But stress is not caused by having more money; while it is caused by having less. Anyway, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree



I think you are making my point, worries are inversely proportional to the amount of money one has... Bowie is at the extreme, where his worries are never going to be related to not having enough money. His music is no where as good as it used to be though.... hmmm maybe we're onto another corollary





This point is meaningless, you said yourself, keeping their money in the bank instead of the driveway. They still have the money, they aren't giving that away... and I wager it ain't going to be all the rage for rich people to do so anytime soon. A doctor scaling back so he can have even more leisure time, this is exactly my point - most of us don't have that option; you can only scale back if you are rich and secure enough to still insure your security and comfort. You're describing someone who is rich enough to buy more leisure time and reduce their stress level, that is all.

tell that to jack lalanne

I never said having more money causes stress! I agree with you!


I was saying that the correlation is not linear. That's what I said in the beginning. My original point was that it rises up to a certain point, and then flattens out. I was adding that maybe the curve starts to pick up again at the extreme high end, but not enough to be statistically significant.


Which merely means you are above the point of insecurity. People in third world countries who live in one-room shacks are "downshifting" now too.

I've seen Jack do plenty of resistance training. I haven't seen him out running any marathons...

Sorry, I still don't buy it. I think it is a simple, linear equation - I don't believe people who make $40,000 have it as easy as those who make $170,000. More money, means more security and more perks, which in turns helps reduce stress. I don't buy that there is some middle ground where it all flattens out. Believing that someone isn't better off than you when they make a hundred thousand dollars a year more than you is just a sour-grapes rationalization; it's something one uses to feel better about ones' lot in life, consoling oneself with "that extra money won't buy them happiness". Anyway, it's probably always been a popular platitude, something the serfs like to tell themselves, viewing their poverty as some sort of consolation prize for not having been born into privilege.