IT Industry and Stress

Now a days there is so much buzz about stress and work-life balance. Specially after IT industry took its current form, so many new kinds of problems have come into life of otherwise healthy indivuduals. These problems are more related to mind. And very young individuals ususally falling between age of 20-40 happen to have this problem more. What is the reason? is it life style or the kind of work?
I have heard so many young guys have heart attack. 2 of my colleagues who were below 30 years of age could not survive the attack. We hear from every individual that work comes his/her first priority. Its true also as most of the time when we are awake we are either working in office or thinking about the next task or planning for future work in office or in general taking pride to speak about work life. So out of 17-18 hours that we are awake, minimum 12 hours we are giving to work. But is that the reason why we are experiencing health problems? Even in other industries also people work for 10 hours and that too 6 days a week, whereas in IT people work only for 5 days and they get 2 days completely off for themselves. So why is it that IT people face this issue more.
I think its more because of the expectations we set for ourselves and the competition we face everyday. In other industries the promotion is based on experience. Here its based on performance. Every individual, without realizing, pushes himself/herself to such an extent that one more step can take him/her to disaster. Everyone wants to achieve the maximum as early as possible. In achieving that we are losing up on very important part in our life. By the time we realize that, its too late. Sometimes we don't even realize that and take pride in buying 3 bunglows, 2 cars etc etc. I wish the young people who are now joining in the fascinating industry realize the importance of health and life first and give that the utmost priority in life as compared to onsite trip, $s and other material things. Life is very beautiful if only we have time to live and enjoy that.