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THERE’S no need to quit your high-powered job on the grounds of health. Stress alone probably won’t make you drop dead of a heart attack. John MacLeod and colleagues from the University of Birmingham say people have got the wrong idea about stress because in previous studies most of the people who were stressed also happened to be poor. In their new study of 5606 men, ranging from minimum-wage workers to top executives, the richer participants happened to be the most stressed. And the Birmingham team found that the most stressed people were more likely to think they had heart problems, for example reporting a tight chest when walking up stairs. But they actually turned out to be slightly less likely to suffer a heart attack. Our risk of heart disease probably has a lot more to do with income level than stress, the researchers say in the British Medical Journal (vol 324, p 1247).