Is a six-figure salary bad for your health?

Ten years ago, Catherine Salway was brand director at Virgin, jetting between LA, New York and London, earning a six-figure salary, flicking through property magazines and considering buying a larger home in west London.

By most corporate executive standards, she was living the dream: a high-flying career at a riotously successful company, accompanied by a jet-set lifestyle of copious champagne, canapés and transatlantic flights.

The trouble was, it didn't feel as good as it seemed. "I was two stone overweight, I drank far too much, and my moods oscillated between stressed and depressed," she says. "I was cash-rich but time-poor, rarely seeing my family and friends, eating and drinking far too much."

After 17 years as Richard Branson's "brand guru", leaving Virgin was a wrench, but three years ago Catherine quit to set up her own alcohol-free bar, Redemption, in Notting Hill. "Some people think they have a book in them; I felt I had a brand in me," she explains. This sidestep out of the corporate world transformed her health. "I had been propelled by ambition and didn't realise just how bad the lifestyle was, until I popped out the other end.

"I haven't had a manicure for three years, but I'm down to a healthy size 12, I book yoga into my schedule three times a week and I see my dad twice a month, instead of a few times a year," she says. "At 42, I look and feel so much better than I did 10 years ago."

But there is mounting evidence that the executive lifestyle is not all it is cracked up to be. Last week, a major new study showed that employees who work more than 55 hours a week have a 33 per cent increased risk of stroke, compared with co-workers who clock up 35-40 hours. "Sudden death from overwork is often caused by stroke and is believed to result from a repetitive triggering of the stress response," wrote researchers from University College London, in the medical journal The Lancet. While they can't state categorically that long hours cause people to have strokes, their study shows a clear link - one that gets stronger as the hours people put in get longer.