The only thing worse than a late night at the office catching up on paperwork is late night…after late night…after late night…at the office, stuck in a job where you’re always catching up, but you never quite get there.

If that’s your story, you might want to consider a career change before it’s too late: The latest research finds that people who work the longest hours have a higher risk of major depression.

(And attention bosses who expect all those late nights: No, your employees don’t do it because they love the work — they do it because they fear losing their jobs.)

In the new study, some 2,000 British office workers were tracked for nearly six years — and those who clocked more than 11 hours a day were nearly two and a half times more likely to come down with major depression than those who stuck to the “normal” seven-hour or eight-hour shift.

You might think some of these people were depressed to begin with — which is perhaps why they were so willing to throw themselves on the mercy of their jobs.

But, in this case, the researchers wrote in PLoS One that none of the workers showed any sign of mental problems at the start of the study. The link even held after all the usual risk factor adjustments.

In other words, it’s the work — and, more specifically, far too many hours at work — causing that increase in depression risk.

And that’s not the only danger that comes with too much overtime. Those long hours could actually kill you.

One recent study found that people who work between three and four hours of overtime a day have a 60 percent higher risk of a heart attack than those who stick to regular office hours.

That same study also confirmed what’s already obvious to anyone regularly putting in 10 or 12 hours at a time: All that extra work can cause stress, aggression, hostility, and sleep disorders.

And of course, overtime can sap your social life and alienate you from your family.

It’s never easy finding a balance between work and home — but find that balance. It could literally save your life.

Just because you’re a heart patient doesn’t mean you have to miss out on some Valentine’s Day romance.

Sure, you might need to skip the bonbons — not that you should be eating candy anyway, even if you’re not a heart patient — and your doctor might have a long list of other “don’ts” you need to follow.

But there’s still one “do” you can do: If you can climb a flight of stairs without suffering chest pain or a bout of gasping, you can have sex — even if you had a heart attack just last week, according to the latest advice from the American Heart Association.

AHA doctors say sex is only a very tiny risk factor for a heart attack — and that risk is the same regardless of whether or not you’ve already suffered one.

That being the case, I can’t think of a better way to help yourself recover from a heart attack — because sex itself is actually one of the best ways to boost your ticker in the first place.

One recent study found that men who have sex at least twice a week are 50 percent less likely to suffer a fatal heart attack than men who do it less than once a month.

Regular sex can also cut the risk of prostate cancer — and sex in general, for men and women alike, can lower levels of stress, boost general well-being and may even help you to live longer.

Of course, the AHA gets a lot wrong — carb-heavy, low-fat diet, anyone? — so naturally, they’ve managed to botch this one too.

Instead of just telling men it’s OK to have sex after a heart attack and leaving it at that, they had to add that it’s safe for them to try penis pills like Viagra, too (unless they take nitrates) — despite the fact that there’s nothing safe about sex meds.

Along with links to heart problems, especially in heart patients, sex meds can rob you of both your vision and your hearing. They can also cause headaches, stomach problems and painful erections that won’t go away without the help of an ER doc with a sharp instrument.

If you’re having problems down there, forget meds. Try losing weight first.

Obesity causes testosterone to plunge and estrogen to rise — a one-two punch right where it hurts most. In most cases, dropping those pounds will put you right back on your game, no meds necessary.

More importantly, losing weight will also help boost your stamina — so you’ll actually have the energy you need to get moving in the bedroom again, too.

The proverbial broken heart can actually do the job for real: Depressed people have double the risk of heart attack and a much higher risk of heart problems overall than non-depressed people.

A fluke? No way — the link has been made way too often, in too many studies.

And now, the latest research shows how the mental strain of depression can take a physical toll on the body — specifically in ways that can dramatically boost your heart risk.

Researchers gave stress tests to 866 people, about 5 percent of whom were depressed — and these people had a much harder time recovering afterwards.

In fact, it seems like the stress didn’t end with the test: Depressed people had heart rates that kept galloping and blood pressure levels that stayed high well after everyone else returned to normal.

That’s a sure sign of stress on the body — and researchers say these delays in recovery show that the body’s stress response simply isn’t working right.

And you already know what too much stress can do to even the healthiest of hearts.

That’s not the only reason for the link between depression and heart disease. As the researchers behind the new study point out, depressed people tend to have lousy habits — they let themselves go, and eventually it takes a toll on the body.

But there’s also a third option out there — one the new study didn’t look at: meds.

Antidepressant drugs can do a number on the body from top to bottom, and the older tricyclic meds that were used to treat depression in the decades before SSRIs came along in particular have been linked to serious heart problems.

In one study, researchers found that tricyclic antidepressants increased heart risk by more than a third. Another recent study found that both tricyclics and SSRIs increase the risk of stroke in women.

SSRIs have even been linked to sudden cardiac death in women.

And if you already have heart disease, SSRIs might make the condition worse or even hasten your death: A Duke University study from 2006 found that heart patients who took the antidepressants had a 55 percent higher risk of death.

SSRIs have also been linked to everything from personality changes and sexual side effects to headaches, nausea, diarrhea and even suicide — and they don’t even work very well to boot, with many failing to beat placebos in studies.

Clearly depression can’t be ignored. But just as clearly, it can’t be treated with meds, either.

That’s enough on depression — keep reading for the best way to stay happy.

CT scans, X-rays, MRIs, ultrasounds — you name it, people are getting them far more often than necessary, leading to extra stress and excess treatments.

And in the case of those CT scans and X-rays, patients are being dosed with high levels of radiation for no reason at all.

Well, docs now say they’ve noticed all this too — and they’ve come up with a novel justification for it: The patients are making them do it!

It’s as if a patient might walk in with a gun and say, “doc, I have a headache — give me a brain scan and give it to me right now… OR ELSE.”

Obviously, that’s not happening… but a new survey finds that many doctors are basically afraid of their own patients — and that’s why they’re ordering up all those tests.

Researchers say their survey of 627 family physicians and internists finds that 42 percent believe their patients are getting too much medical care — but say they have to go along with it… because 80 percent believe they’ll be sued if they don’t test the hell out of their patients.

They have a point, to a certain extent. Many patients do walk in demanding meds, tests or both.

But whatever happened to “just say no?”

I think I know what happened to it, and it has nothing to do with lawsuits: “No” vanished when docs realized they could buy their own testing equipment and double-dip on their patients, collecting fees and co-pays for the office visit as well as the extra bucks for all those unnecessary tests.

Some of them even admit it — three percent of the doctors who took the survey said money influenced their decisions to order up all those extra tests.

I’m sure the real number is much higher, and many of the docs in the survey even admitted that as well… sort of: Thirty-nine percent say OTHER doctors would cut back on those tests and scans if they didn’t stand to gain extra money from them.

In other words, “I’m honest — but those other guys are crooks.”

No wonder the healthcare system is a wreck.