Christmas Eve is often a time of happiness and joy for many, but according to a new Swedish study, there’s a health risk that peaks on that day at 10:00 pm. That’s when the annual peak time for heart attack risk occurs, and it happens more often in the elderly.
Stress is one of the main culprits of this risk factor. In Sweden, Christmas Eve is actually the bigger event than Christmas Day, and researchers noted a 37 percent increased risk on this day, peaking at 10:00 pm. More generally there was a 15 percent increased risk over the Christmas period, according to Science Alert. The risk was the greatest in the over 75 age group and those with existing diabetes or heart disease. The study also noted more cases of heart attacks reported on Midsummer holidays, early mornings, and Mondays.
“Christmas and Midsummer holidays were associated with higher risk of myocardial infarction (otherwise known as a heart attack), particularly in older and sicker patients, suggesting a role of external triggers in vulnerable individuals,” the team explains in their study. Previous studies have also made the link between holiday seasons and more heart attacks, but this new study adds some extra interesting detail from many more years of data.
While this study alone isn’t enough to prove cause and effect between the Christmas season and heart attack risk, unmeasured factors might be lurking unseen in the background, it does fit in well with the existing research out there. The holiday season comes with stress about money, anxiety about the number of events one feels obligated to attend, and very limited time spent on oneself. In fact, it has become almost socially taboo to focus on limiting your own stress during the holidays.
“Excessive food intake, alcohol, long distance traveling may also increase the risk of heart attack,” one of the team, David Erlinge from Lund University in Sweden, told Science Alert. “Interestingly, the pattern of increased risk in the morning which dominates the rest of the year was reversed at Christmas, with an increased risk in the evening, indicating that the stress and eating during the day triggered the heart attacks.”
Remember to take care of yourself this holiday season. Carve out some time to destress from everything and relax. There are a few things that can be done in a natural and healthy way to recuperate your calm during the holidays.
An earlier study from the same team linked increased heart attack risk with cold and cloudy weather, too. Considering the control data in this new study was taken from the weeks close to Christmas, this factor should have already been accounted for. “Understanding what factors, activities, and emotions precede these myocardial infarctions and how they differ from myocardial infarctions experienced on other days could help develop a strategy to manage and reduce the number of these events,” said the researchers.
The study was done in Sweden and the spike happens during their traditional holidays. It probably is more due to worries that they might fall victim to their welcomed guests from the middle east and north Africa, because these holidays are so blasphemous and hurtful to them.
Watch out for slick steps in the snow. I just bounced down my back porch steps. I can laugh about it now, but as it happened it friggin hurt.
Abaddon, good points. Study conducted in Sweden? I’d say they’re full of it.
If you were to ask physicians, registered nurses, and nursing home staff, a lot of elderly folks will rally just before the Christmas holidays or their birthday…and it ends up being their last hurrah. It is as though they are holding out for that gathering of family and friends and then use up the last little bit they have. It’s not a bad way to go.
Since the late seventies, people have a peculiar idea that living longer is better. It ain’t. What happens is you live longer into decrepitude, penury, and lose control.
Honestly, I think it’s a curse to live too long and it’s as ugly as sin to see what America has become. I wish young people knew how great it used to be by comparison. Once, practically any hard working guy could live modestly in a home they owned, grow some of their own food, live with a sweet submissive Christian wife, have children, and help them grasduate from college and have a better life.
Those days are gone as our own politicians sold their souls to Lucifer for temporary gain.
Men once were normally at a fighting weight and we could produce soldiers who could invoke fear in our enemies and hold fast. Now, what passes for men are milksops and fools and cuckolds.
Two years ago, I free climbed a rocky cliff probably for the last time. I doubt many younger men could do it.
a sweet submissive Christian wife? yep, these are very hard to find nowerdays, thank Christian God for that.
See Ephesians chapter 5. If you rebel against that, you rebel against Yahweh.
“a sweet submissive Christian wife?”
Yes sir, they are out there. I church with many of them. They are contented and at peace with God and their families.
It’s a God thing.
Now, ladies. Can you find a kind loving husband who will love only you…
Ephesians 5:25 Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it…
Grandee, that is the truth. It’s why I’m still single; too many guys think submissive equals doormat.
I wouldn’t advise anyone to call a Kentucky Christian wife a doormat or she’s liable to whip out a can of whoopass.
And the Bible has a lot lengthier definition of a Christian wife’s attributes in Proverbs 31.
I use that chapter as my guide.
I didn’t find him, he found me. I was 40, raising my three children from my first marriage( divorced after 21 years) and went back to school to improve my chances of getting a better job, other than restaurants and convenience stores. He watched me for 2.5 years, then three months after I graduated, asked me out. The rest is a wonderful history! So it happens, but it’s worth the wait. He takes excellent care of all of us!
When you have to sit at a dinner table full of Democrats (aka your relatives).
Thats a dipped-in-shit Christmas. Glad its only once a year.
Like any storm, Christmas will pass.
The dog knows bad words and angry, facial expressions, so tells me when to quit.
This is far too late.
Problematic people and situations are easy to identify, well before there is any upset.
ain’t it the truth.
if the dog leaves the room, you’ve gone too far 🙂
He’s not afraid of me. Paws at my leg and whines.
December is never the best time of the year for me. The 15th is the anniversary of my wife’s death. But I’ll get through it just like I always do. When you lose a loved one that is pain that stays with you for life. It never goes away. I miss her like hell. But she’s in a better place and one day I’ll be reunited with her.
Deplorable Braveheart, I know I’m not alone in wishing for you a deeper healing, I can’t imagine what this loss feels like for you.
You are right: she is in a better place, and one day, you will be reunited with her.
I avoid looking at commercials because they are the opposite of reality. Stay grounded, stay warm, stay healthy!
People who are alone in life feel that loneliness most during Christmas. This is especially true at this time of the year. What gets really bad is when they decide not to eat. When this happens, it is almost impossible to reverse it. People eat more at social gatherings.
Being I am broke, for Christmas I am giving all my family a very nice Christmas present. I will not kill them with the STRESS of my being there to STRESS them out with their drama. Likewise I wont bring home your myriad colds flus and other communicable bugs. Likewise because I don’t have Facebook or Face time or other social media, I will not also come to you through electronic media either (nor in the mail)to be the delivered proxy version of Heart attack and STRESS. no I don’t want a drink, no I don’t want another slice of cake or your pie. With all the well wishes I can send by way of this medium. Merry Christmas, may the holidays find you well and STRESS free…
One anthropologist said that a culture could be judged bv it’s religious paraphernalia, in that some icons were made, intricately, of ultra-valuable, rare materials. Others ornaments are made hastily, from plastic.
I think, if the holidays were supposed to be observed, sincerely, like it was something sacred, it might look like what is called “slow living”. You would basically have to dedicate an entire year to finding what is meaningful and presenting it as a formal sacrifice.
There are so many Americans on medications that suppress the immune system. There are the steroids like prednisone and the biologicals like Humira and Remicade. A serious pandemic would probably kill off a lot of these folks. I don’t think anyone really knows the total number. These are serious medications with major risks. If you are a long-term user of prednisone, they wean you off over weeks.
Here’s a thought: celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ this year and skip what poses for December 25th which is sadly a recreation of various pagan traditions like the Roman Saturnalia. Renew your faith and reinvigorate your family relationships as well as foster sincere friendships and romance.
Yahweh is the basis for existence and love.
Jesus came that we might be saved through grace and live life in abundance. That has nothing to do with commercialism and stressing over trying to bribe people with rich experiences through gifts.