Monday, July 13, 2009

It's Monday, you could die today....

Yet another study has determined that Monday is the worst day of the week for your heart. I don't mean Monday is bad for your heart because that's the day most people tend to break up. In fact, I really have no idea which day of the week people favour as a breaking-up day, although Monday does sound a good bet. What I do mean is that several studies have found that more people die from heart attacks (and strokes) on Monday than on any other day of the week, especially Monday mornings.

In a study published in the British Medical Journal, researchers looked at all deaths in Scotland attributed to cardiac causes between the years 1986 and 1995, of which there were lots because Scotland has one of the world's highest rates of death from heart attack and stroke, most of which is attributed to all that smoking and sitting around and eating badly that is standard fare in the country of kilts and clans.

The researchers not only found that, as expected, the death rate from coronary events was indeed higher in all age groups on Mondays, but that it was particularly elevated in people under the age of 50.

Why? 2 probable reasons. First, there is the cardiac response to all that heavy "binge" drinking that so many younger people indulge in on the weekend, and younger Scots, as they will quickly acknowledge, take a back seat to no one in how hard they party.

Then there's also the Monday morning anticipation - "dread" or "bitterness" are better words, I think - of another week of uninviting and often poorly compensated labour which is probably enough to push the hearts of some high risk people over the edge.

So what can you do with this news? Well, you can, I suppose, tone down your partying on weekends, especially if you are younger and already have some heart disease risks, as so many more younger people tend to have these days. Or you can do what my son did when I told him of these findings early one Sunday morning before I left to do my weekend call-in show. His reply? "These results clearly mean, dad, that you shouldn't start the week until Tuesday afternoon." And then he went back to sleep.

That kid is going to be a scientist one day, I think. Either that or unemployed.

Source: Yahoo

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