Upticks of ‘Christmas Coronaries’ and ‘New Year’s Heart Attacks’ real? Yes!#stress Is the stress of this time real? Apparently it is – and it’s deadly. According to the American Heart Association, the Kloner 1999 examination of 222,265 death records from Los Angeles yielded “cardiac deaths in December and January were 33 percent higher than in summer months, with a dramatic increase in deaths starting at Thanksgiving and continuing through New Year’s.” (3)
New Zealand looked at the same time period (their summer months) and the results: “Our findings are consistent with a previously reported study conducted in the United States, suggesting that cardiac mortality does not take a ‘summer break’… We found that 4.2% more persons die from a cardiac-related cause outside of a hospital during the Christmas period than would be expected based on long-term seasonal trend” and “the age of death was younger for those who died from a cardiac-related condition during the Christmas period compared with those who died of a similar condition during the remainder of the year and in the pre-Christmas period.” (5)
Please do not delay going to the ER if you have chest pain, chest pressure, shortness of breath or new/worsening fatigue. They believe stress and delay in care explain a lot of this. Remember the data is cardiac DEATHS not just heart attacks.
