Do employees with greater work-life balance have healthier hearts?

Boston — Flexibility in the workplace can help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and even keep your heart feeling younger, results of a recent study show.

Researchers from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Penn State University studied more than 1,500 workers in the information technology and long-term care industries. The workers were screened for blood pressure, body mass index, glycated hemoglobin, cholesterol and smoking status at the start of the study as well as one year later.

One group was assigned an intervention in which supervisors were trained to encourage greater work-life balance and workers received training on improving time management. Another group, meanwhile, conducted its work as usual.

Results show that the workers in the intervention group had lower cardiometabolic risk scores than those in the work-as-usual group. For older workers and those with higher baseline scores, the drop in follow-up cardiometabolic risk scores represented an equivalent of five to 10 years of age-related changes.

Additionally, workers 45 or older with a higher baseline score were more likely to see their score reduced than employees younger than 45.

In a press release, Lisa Berkman, co-lead study author and professor of public policy and epidemiology at Harvard, said the findings “could be particularly consequential for low- and middle-wage workers who traditionally have less control over their schedules and job demands and are subject to greater health inequities.”

The study was published online in the American Journal of Public Health.