Julie Kirkwood

If you find yourself consistently working long hours, it might be time to check in with a doctor.

A study published online last week by the journal Hypertension found that the more hours people work in a typical week, the more likely they are to have high blood pressure.

People who work a standard 40-hour week had 14 percent higher rates of high blood pressure than people working part-time. Working 41 to 50 hours a week raised the risk to 17 percent compared to part-timers. Working 51 hours or more raised the risk to 29 percent. High blood pressure is a warning sign that a person could develop heart disease.

The study is based on a survey of more than 24,000 people who live in California and work at least 11 hours a week.

Maybe it's time to pack up your desk and go home a little earlier.

Unhealthy anger

Work hours are not the only thing that can be rough on the body.

A new study in the journal Thorax finds that grumpy old men lose lung function faster than milder-tempered old men.

Lung function naturally decreases as people get older, the authors write, but their observations of 670 men enrolled in the Veterans Affairs aging study suggest that hostility and anger can accelerate the process.

Such crankiness in elderly people is already linked in some studies to heart disease, weakened immune systems and earlier death, they report.

For this study, the men took a true/false hostility test to determine things like their level of suspiciousness, resentment and cynical mistrust. Then they had their lung capacity tested several times on a device that measures the amount of air breathed in and out.

The more hostile the man, in general, the smaller his lung capacity.

So taking a deep breath is a way to feel less cranky, and it turns out, being less cranky helps you take a deeper breath.

Bears and 'shrinkage'

Researchers have discovered an embarrassing and troubling problem among polar bears exposed to pollution. Their private parts are a little smaller.

How do they know? Well, they were smart enough not to try to measure the delicate equipment of live bears.

Instead, they asked for the reproductive organs, both external and internal, from polar bears killed through legal subsistence hunting in Greenland. The scientists also measured the pollutant levels in the fat under each bear's skin.

The more pollutants, the smaller the genitalia.

Polar bears are at high risk for problems related to PCBs, PBDEs and other fat-soluble pollutants because they eat seal blubber, where these chemicals can be highly concentrated.

The scientists, writing in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, say this is the first study to examine how these pollutants affect reproductive organs. Polar bears live long lives and they don't have a lot of cubs, they write, so anything that gets in the way of reproduction could be a serious threat.

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Julie Kirkwood's Health and Science Journal runs in Health North on Mondays. She can be reached at (978) 946-2251 or jkirkwood@eagletribune.com.