With heart disease still ranking as the number-one killer of
women, the more we can do to keep our hearts nice and healthy,
the better. A new study in the European Journal of Public Health
has found that people who earn low wages are at elevated risk
for high blood pressure, which, in turn, increases the
possibility of heart disease. The researchers examined health
data for 5,000 people aged 25 to 65, who didn't have high blood
pressure at the beginning of the study, and they discovered that
workers with the lowest wages were more likely to have
hypertension than workers with the highest wages. And the
correlation was particularly strong among women and people
between the ages of 25 to 44. For anyone who's ever been
stressed out about money, the possible reason for the link isn't
too surprising: lead study author J. Paul Leigh, a professor of
health economics at the University of California, Davis says,
"Some people will, unfortunately, measure their social worth
based upon their wages.... Another factor is s