The number of heart attack victims jumps by 4% during the end of year holidays. Those responsible would be the stress and the overly large meals.
Between gifts and watered meals, Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve delight young and old. But one event can be a spoiler: a heart attack! Work from the University of Melbourne (Australia), published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, confirm that myocardial infarction mortality jumps during the Christmas season.
“The increase in the number of deaths from natural causes during the holiday season has already been established in the United States,” said Josh Knight, responsible for the work. However, the Christmas period in this country (from December 25 to January 7) corresponds to one of the coldest periods of the year when death rates soar due to low temperatures and the flu ”.
But what about the countries located in the southern hemisphere where Christmas is celebrated in the middle of summer? To find the answer, the researchers analyzed the death certificates of more than 738,000 New Zealanders, of whom nearly 200,000 died of a heart attack, between 1988 and 2013. And it appears that even hot countries are affected by the peak. Christmas heart attack. The researchers observed a 4% increase in deaths attributed to a heart attack between December 25 and January 7. The average age of the victims was 76 years against 77 years for those who died outside the Christmas periods.
Stress, food abuse …
In these hot regions of the world, the winter cold is immediately an explanation to be dismissed. For the researchers, several hypotheses are possible, such as the stress associated with preparing for the holidays or the fear of seeing certain family members, food abuse and alcohol consumption, as well as the clutter of medical services and the reduction staffing in hospitals.
The authors also suggest that this spike in mortality may be due to patients at risk delaying their medical appointments. “In New Zealand, the Christmas season is a great time to visit the country, and patients usually travel far from their doctors. This could contribute to the lack of access to medicines, and increase the time taken for emergency treatment, ”supposes the researcher.
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