The Life of Stress

A lot of sympathy is being wasted on executives for leading lives so full of stress and strain that it impairs their health. Actually, their subordinates suffer more from high blood pressure and artery disease. These surprising findings were reported in last week's A.M.A. Journal by two Manhattan researchers who compared 1,171 male executives (ranging down from directors, corporation officers and general managers to division heads and auditors) with a mixed group of 1,203 nonexecutives (including 563 women). They worked for the Standard Oil group of companies, largely in Rockefeller Center's tallest (70 stories) skyscraper. All were white-collar types who visited the companies' medical department for voluntary health examinations.

Executives averaged 50 1/2 years old, but fewer of them had high blood pressure (of the simple type, apparently with no other disease) than the nonexecutive males of the same age: 6.1% as against 7.5%. Cornell Medical College's Dr. Richard E. Lee and New York University's Dr. Ralph F. Schneider found that high blood pressure with generalized artery disease followed the same pattern--2.2% of executives had it, as compared with 3.4% of age-matched male subordinates. So did the combination of high blood pressure with heart-and-artery disease: 2.8% compared with 3.7% of subordinates. Most surprising, arteriosclerosis of the kind that leads to heart attacks--fictionally supposed to be the greatest killer of tycoons --was more than twice as common among their minions, and generalized hardening of the arteries was almost three times as common.

Dr. Lee (an assistant professor) and Dr. Schneider (an associate professor)--both junior-executive types--offered several halfhearted explanations: maybe nothing succeeds like good health, or maybe executives are smarter and have learned the value of "escape valves" such as hobbies, or perhaps the most important thing about stress is the individual's reaction to it. Where the researchers missed the important point was in failing to note that a man of 50 who is still in a subordinate position is likely to suffer from inferiority feelings, a sense of injustice and frustration, whereas the top executive's very position ensures him against the worst ravages of all these stressful, health-destroying emotions.

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