After a busy day at work, perhaps you head down to the pub to have a pint with your flatmates. Or maybe it’s an evening of sake and karaoke with the boss. Or pitchers of margaritas at your office park’s fast-casual restaurant. Work and alcohol: wherever we are, they seem to go together like start-ups and beer carts. 
 
 In moderation, there’s nothing wrong with that. But what about when it becomes a problem? Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and colleagues found that people who log long hours are about 12% more likely to become heavy drinkers. 
 
 It’s just the latest in a series of studies she’s conducted on the negative health effects of overwork. “We have shown associations with impaired sleep and depressive symptoms,” she writes, via email. Another study showed an association between long hours and Type 2 diabetes in low income workers. And other research has found a dramatic correlation between overwork and heart disease. 
 
 In the study on excessive drinking, she and her colleagues took data from 61 different studies to create a dataset of over 330,000 workers across 14 countries. “We found that working more than 48 hours a week was associated with increased risky alcohol use,” explains Virtanen. “We defined risky alcohol use as more than 14 drinks per week for women and more than 21 drinks per week for men.” 
 
 Specifically, they found that people who worked long hours were, in general, 11% more likely to be heavier drinkers than those who worked normal hours. But just based on that association, they couldn’t be sure that long hours had actually caused the increased drinking. So they identified a cohort of their dataset that was logging long days, but had normal amounts of drinking, at the beginning of their dataset’s time period, and then tracked how those people were doing six years later. They found they were 12% more likely to have started drinking excessively. However, Virtanen notes, “this is an observational study, so we cannot completely make causal assumptions of the relationship between long working hours and alcohol use.” 
 
 A cultural aside: as an American, I found their definition of “risky” drinking to be rather generous. After all, the CDC says anything more than 8 weekly drinks a week for a woman or 14 for a man, is too much. This is just one of those things about which Europeans are a little more relaxed. For instance, Britain’s NHS advises women to stick to 2-3 units per day and men to 3-4 units per day — which would translate to 14-21 per week for women, and 21-28 for men. (Cheers, mate!) 
 
 But note that despite different countries’ different attitudes toward alcohol, and the fact that Virtanen’s data came from over a dozen countries, she did not see any differences between North America, Europe, Australia, or Asia: people everywhere were similarly likely to start drinking more as a result of pulling long hours. 
 
 The research team also found no differences between women and men, Virtanen explains: “Although women were less often risky drinkers than men (which has previously been shown in many other studies as well), the association was similar: if a woman worked long hours, her risk to develop unhealthy alcohol use habit was increased compared to a woman who worked standard hours.” 
 
 But maybe, to you, that sounds like a modest risk — nothing to write home about, or rather, head home over. If so, consider some of the other findings Virtanen has uncovered. 
 
 A previous paper she published found that working long hours is bad for the heart. Really bad: white-collar workers who worked 10 hours a day were 60% more likely to have heart-related health problems than white-collar workers who worked seven hours a day. A follow-up study found that people who worked long hours were 40% more likely to suffer from coronary heart disease than those who worked standard hours. 
 
 Is this dramatic change just because of increased stress? Or is there something else going on? Virtanen told me the mechanisms themselves haven’t been studied, so they can’t be entirely certain about which factors are involved. “We think stress might be one of them; poor recovery, poor sleep and symptoms of distress which can all contribute to heart diseases. Then there are lifestyle factors such as sedentary work and leisure time, unhealthy diet, alcohol use, and smoking. People who work long hours may in general have a lifestyle which involves poor self-care; for example they may be reluctant (or don’t have time) to see a doctor.” 
 
 Eventually, this physical wear and tear takes a toll on the brain. In yet another piece of research, Virtanen and team found that overwork hurts your brain in the long term. “We examined the association between long working hours and cognitive function and found a small decrease in a reasoning score [after] 5 years among those who worked long hours,” says Virtanen. “This finding may relate to cardiovascular health since it is known that cardiovascular health affects cognitive function.” 
 
 Looking for a loophole, I asked Virtanen if there was any difference, health-wise, in pulling late nights at the office and working from home. Does it still count as “overwork” if it’s just another hour or two of email after dinner? She’s not sure. “At the moment, we only have this large picture of the topic. Unanswered questions are: how long does one need to work overtime until there are harmful health effects? Is it harmful if you only have busy peaks of overwork every now and then? What if you enjoy your work and it’s highly rewarding? We hope we will get answers to these questions in our future studies.” 
 
 In the meantime, the best advice is the advice too many of us ignore: leave work at 5, and get thee to a gym. ||||| Work hard, drink hard. People who work more than 48 hours a week drink more heavily and are more likely to develop risky levels of alcohol consumption, the largest ever study of working patterns and alcohol finds. 
 
 An analysis of 61 studies from 14 countries, including the US, UK, Australia and Germany, found that those who work longer hours are 11 per cent more likely to be heavy drinkers than people who work a standard week of around 40 hours. 
 
 The study is also the first to examine how likely people who start working longer hours are to acquire dangerous drinking habits. By analysing cohort studies, which follow the same people over long periods of time, Marianna Virtanen at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health in Helsinki and her colleagues found that people working 49 to 54 hours a week were 13 per cent more likely to start drinking at "risky" levels. This is defined as 14 drinks a week for women, and 21 drinks a week for men. 
 
 A tonic for the masses 
 
 "There was some evidence from previous studies that working long hours may be associated with unhealthy lifestyle, such as low physical activity and high alcohol use," says Virtanen. But these studies had never been brought together or combined with a wealth of unpublished data, she says. 
 
 Altogether, their analysis took in data from over 330,000 people, and found that a longer working week was associated with heavier drinking regardless of gender, geographical region or socioeconomic group. 
 
 The study provides strong backing for the European Union Working Time Directive, which gives European workers the right to work no more than a 48-hour week. But many employees still end up putting in over 50 hours in an effort to earn faster promotions or strive for a living wage through overtime. 
 
 Booze may offer a way to unwind. "We think that some people may cope with excess working hours with habits that are unhealthy, such as using alcohol," says Virtanen. "The symptoms they try to alleviate with alcohol may include stress, depression and sleep disturbances." 
 
 Journal reference: The BMJ, DOI: 10.1136/bmj.g7772 
 
 If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to. ||||| It’s true: working too hard can drive you to drink, researchers said on Wednesday as they warned of the health risks of such dual excess. 
 
 
 
 An overview of studies covering more than 400,000 people showed that individuals who exceed 48 working hours per week are likelier to consume “risky” quantities of alcohol, they said. 
 
 The paper, published in the British Medical Journal, reported that long working hours boosted the likelihood of higher alcohol intake by 11% overall. 
 
 People who worked 49-54 hours a week ran a 13% higher risk of developing a “risky alcohol use” habit compared to counterparts who worked a 35-40-hour work week. 
 
 Those working 55 hours or more were 12% more at risk. 
 
 “Risky” alcohol use was defined as more than 14 units per week for a woman and more than 21 for a man - levels that have been linked to a higher risk for liver and heart disease, cancer, stroke and mental disorders. 
 
 An alcohol unit is the equivalent of a third of a pint of medium-strength beer, half a 175ml (six fluid ounces) glass of red wine with 12% alcohol by volume, or a 25ml shot of whisky, 
 
 The findings add statistical backing to anecdotal evidence for a link between excessive work and alcohol abuse, the authors said. 
 
 More than a dozen developed economies were covered by the research, including Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan and the United States. 
 
 “This meta-analysis supports the longstanding suspicion that among workers subjected to long working hours, alcohol can seem like a fast acting and effective way to dull work-related aches and pains and smooth the transition between work life and home life,” Cassandra Okechukwu of the Harvard School of Public Health wrote in an editorial. 
 
 Long working hours have previously been linked to cardiovascular disease, depression and anxiety. 
 
 The increased risk of developing a “risky” drinking habit from over-work was small in absolute terms, Okechukwu said. Also, having a job was associated with a lower prevalence of alcohol consumption and a higher chance of recovery from alcohol misuse than being unemployed. 
 
 Even so, the risk should be taken seriously. 
 
 “Any exposure associated with avoidable increases in disease or health damaging behaviour, or both, warrants careful examination,” said Okechukwu. 
 
 “Indeed, these findings could add impetus to further regulation of working hours as a public health intervention.” ||||| Cassandra A Okechukwu , assistant professor 1Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Kresge Building, Boston, MA 02115, USA cokechuk{at}hsph.harvard.edu 
 
 Policy makers should think carefully before exempting more workers from restrictions on working hours 
 
 In a linked paper, Virtanen and colleagues (doi:10.1136/bmj.g7772) present a meta-analysis combining published studies (34 cross sectional, n=139 112; two longitudinal, n=6873) with unpublished data (27 cross sectional, n=194 581; 18 longitudinal, n=93 729) to explore associations between long working hours and use of alcohol.1 They found that exposure to long working hours was associated with higher odds of alcohol use in cross sectional studies. Also, compared with working 35-40 hours a week, those working 49-54 and ≥55 hours experienced higher incidence of new onset risky alcohol use (>14 drinks/week in women; >21 drinks/week in men). 
 
 They found no heterogeneity in the tested associations based on sex, socioeconomic class, or geographic regions. This meta-analysis supports the longstanding suspicion that among workers subjected to long working hours, alcohol can seem like a fast acting and effective way to dull work related aches and pains and smooth the transition between work life and home life.2 3 Indeed, these findings could add impetus to further regulation of working hours as a public health intervention. If so, those participating in the policy debate should bear in mind …
– That extra glass of wine you're downing every night after you've put in a 10-hour workday could be because … of that 10-hour workday. A review of 61 studies across 14 countries (for a total of more than 330,000 subjects) linked working more than 48 hours a week with "risky" alcohol use, Harvard Business Review reports. Marianna Virtanen and fellow researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found when subjects worked those longer hours, they were 11% more likely to be heavy drinkers than those who punched in for no more than the typical 40-hour workweek, New Scientist reports. For the purposes of this study, Virtanen defined "risky" drinking as more than 14 alcoholic drinks per week for women, more than 21 for men—a definition that Sarah Green writes for HBR is "rather generous." After all, the CDC defines heavy drinking as more than eight drinks a week for women, 15 drinks if you're a guy. Virtanen warns the study is "observational" and more studies are needed, but her team did find this when it looked at workers who put in long hours but had normal drinking habits: Over a six-year period, 12% of them evolved into heavy drinkers. The study was published in the BMJ in January, and in emails with Virtanen, Green says she tried to find a "loophole." For instance, is there a difference between working in an office or from home? Does the extra time you spend emailing in the evenings count? Virtanen answered her with more questions, like, "What if you enjoy your work and it’s highly rewarding? We hope we will get answers to these questions in our future studies." (Here's how much America's heaviest drinkers drink.)