As if there wasn’t already enough to worry about, now researchers are saying that losing your job late in your career doubles your chances of a heart attack or stroke.

Researchers led by William Gallo of Yale School of Medicine have found that over 10 years, there were 23 heart attacks and 13 strokes among a group of 582 who were forced out of a job.

The team based their findings on participants in a nationally representative health and retirement survey in the US, which involved more than 12,500 people from almost 8,000 households.

The initial surveys were carried out in 1992 on 4,301 people aged between 51 and 61, all of whom were in work at the time and it was found that ten years down the line over 1200 people had retired and nearly 600 had died, while another 450 had temporarily stopped work and 960 had left full time work for other reasons.

The remaining 582 people had lost their jobs and 3,719 were still in work.

Over the 10 year period 202 people had had a heart attack, of which 23 occurred in those who were jobless, and after they had been made redundant, and another 140 people had a stroke, of which 33 occurred in the jobless group, with 13 occurring after the job loss.

When the researchers analysed the figures it was seen that those who had been made redundant over the age of 50 were more than twice as likely to have a heart attack or stroke compared with those who were still in work.

Those figures remained constant even after factors, such as diabetes, smoking, obesity, and high blood pressure were accounted for.

The authors say the study demonstrates that the true cost of unemployment exceeds the obvious economic costs and includes substantial health consequences.

Health experts are not surprised that losing a job late in life has such an effect and say it is not necessarily down to age, but possibly related to the problems people over 50 have finding jobs of an equivalent standard and because of ageism in the workplace and possibly the risks to their pensions.

The research is published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine.