Great news for slackers and the unemployed! That subsect of the population will probably be a lot saner than the rest of us in their golden years. A new study found that if you work more than 55 hours a week, you're at higher risk of developing dementia later on in life.
According to this U.K. Daily Mail article, researchers who have been tracking work habits and their effects in more than 2,200 individuals since the mid-1980s found that those who worked longer hours scored much worse on tests measuring intelligence, short-term memory and word recall.
The study -- which was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology -- drove the point home, noting that the stress and exhaustion brought on by long work hours can be just as bad for you as smoking. And this is on top of the terrible stuff that long hours have already been proven to do to your sleep patterns, heart health and immune system.
