More people's lives are filled with energy-drink-fueled all-nighters at work, and the effects can prove costly, or even fatal. Take the case of Moritz Erhardt, the 21-year-old intern who died after a three-day work binge in Merrill Lynch's London office. Rare binge working deaths like his certainly don't constitute a trend, as one workplace trend analyst explained, but they can be “a canary in a coal mine” warning of the more common dangers of overwork, and the epidemic of it. Americans work for eight and a half hours more per week than they did 35 years ago, and according to government data, 35 percent of Americans worked on weekends in 2011. Such habits take their toll, a recent survey of medical research found: Long working hours are associated with cardiovascular reactions, reduced sleep, unhealthy lifestyle and even dementia.
