Monitoring the physiological consequences of work stress. A new operationalization of allostatic load

A common concern in research about the relationship between health and work has been the role chronic stress at the workplace plays in negative health outcomes. One hypothesized mechanism by which chronic stress results in these health outcomes is through allostatic load (AL). AL is a measure of the cumulative ‘wear and tear’ experienced by the body when activating the physiologic responses necessary to maintain homeostasis.

Traditionally, AL has been measured by counting the number of biomarkers that fall in the least healthy (often the highest) quartile for the distribution of biomarker values in that population. This method for measuring AL can cause some spurious association with health outcomes, because included in those defined as having high AL are people who have diagnosed clinical disease, have biomarkers that fall within a clinically unsafe range, and others who have values below the clinically unsafe range.  In order to deal with this meaningless association, we are proposing a new method for measuring AL that excludes individuals with biomarker values above a clinical cut-off and those with diagnosed disease. By measuring AL in this way, we aim to discover whether there is an association between having multiple biomarkers values that fall within what may be considered a safe-range and health.