5 ways stressful traffic jams harm you

MANILA, Philippines - Metro Manilans battle stress-inducing traffic jams everyday.

With various road projects, truck bans in certain parts of the metro, and invariably unreliable mass transit system in the capital, the nightmare of these traffic jams is unlikely to go away soon.

Beyond, however, the stress of staying longer than one ought to be on the road, missing appointments, and being perennially late, the long commute is bad for health and relationships.

A May 26, 2011 article by the Slate cited various studies that indicate how the long commute harms our well-being:

1.  According to researchers from Umea University in Sweden, 40 percent of couples in which one partner commutes for longer than 45 minutes are more likely to divorce.

The study could not say why, but it is believed that long transit times worsen marital issues such as one partner overburdened by child care, while the other is stressed out by work.

2. A long commute also makes people less happy. A 2006 study by Daniel Kahnerman and Alan Krueger, which polled 900 Texan women, found that commuting, particularly the morning commute, is considered the most unpleasant activity.

3. In 2013, a Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index also found that workers with very long commutes feel less rested  and experience little enjoyment as well.

The same study found that a third of workers with a 90-minute daily commute suffer recurrent neck or back problems. The more time spend commuting means less time exercising.

4. Meanwhile, according to Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam, people with long commutes miss out on social connections. He estimated that every 10 minutes spent commuting translate to  10-percent lesser social connections, which help people feel happy and fulfilled.

5. A research by Thomas James Christian of Brown University also found that  for each minute of commute, a person loses  "a 0.0257-minute exercise time, a 0.0387-minute food preparation time, and a 0.2205-minute sleep time."