[originaltext] And if stress in childhood can lead to heart disease, what ab

And if stress in childhood can lead to heart disease, what about current stressors—longer work hours, threats of layoffs, collapsing pension funds? A study last year in The Lancet examined more than 11,000 heart-attack sufferers from 52 countries. It found that in the year before their heart attacks, patients had been under significantly more strains than some 13,000 healthy control subjects. Those strains came from work, family, financial troubles, depression and other causes. " Each of these factors individually was associated with increased risk," says Dr. Salim Yusuf, professor of medicine at Canada’s McMaster University and senior investigator on the study. "Together, they accounted for 30 percent of overall heart-attack risk. " But people respond differently to high-pressure work situations. Whether it produces heart problems seems to depend on whether you have a sense of control over life, or live at the mercy of circumstances and superiors. (24) That was the experience of John O’Connell, a Rockford, Illinois laboratory manager, who suffered his first heart attack in 1996, at the age of 56. In the two years before, his mother and two of his children had suffered serious illnesses, and his job had been changed in a reorganization. "My life seemed completely out of control," he says. "I had no idea where I would end up. " He ended up in hospital due to a block in his artery. Two months later he had triple bypass surgery. (25) A second heart attack when he was 58 left his doctor shaking his head. There’s nothing more we can do for you, doctors told him.
23. What does the passage mainly discuss?
24. What do we learn about John O’Connell’s family?
25. What did John O’Connell’s doctors tell him when he had a second heart attack?