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Deadly heart attacks are more common on a Monday
- vaishnavsm 3y agoIt would be really interesting to see whether this holds in Middle Eastern countries or other places where the work week starts on a Sunday.
- amelius 3y agoWhy, though? A name is just a name, and that also holds for weekdays.
- ralusek 3y agoCould rule out certain things. If they have more heart attacks on Sunday, then it would make it more likely that the association is "first day of the work week," as opposed to something like "first day of trading on international markets" (only Monday).
- PreInternet01 3y agoAlternate theory: most deadly heart attacks are reported on a Monday, because that's when the admin assistant tasked with doing the paperwork gets around to clearing out the backlog. And since most reports don't include the actual time of death, Monday 08:02 it will be...
- HL33tibCe7 3y ago[flagged]
- PreInternet01 3y agoWell, I certainly changed my mind now! Sorry, that was sarcasm, I know this isn't Reddit... Anyway: so I tried to track down the actual paper being presented (since the linked article, of course, does not cite that). No luck. Lots of clickbait re-peats and re-re-peats. But I guess you have the link and will gladly provide it?
- OJFord 3y agoHere you go: https://heart.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_3/A78.abstract https://heart.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_3/A78.abstract (I searched 'Laffan cardio monday' on Google Scholar, Laffan was quoted as lead author in OP.) Your argument at least in its current form seems not to hold - there's higher incidence over the weekend too.
- PreInternet01 3y agoThanks! This still seems to be just an abstract, though, and I was unable to find any details about the actual method of data collection. Been downvoted enough for today, though, so...
- OJFord 3y agoI think that and the figures might be 'it' since it was presented at the mentioned conference, i.e. either a poster (which wouldn't necessarily ever be published in that form) or an oral presentation (which I guess might just be discussion & slides around the abstract, without anything more than that being written up? Or perhaps to follow - it is dated as 5-7th, i.e. ongoing at time of writing.)
- malfist 3y agoDo you have any evidence for any of the claims here?
- pc86 3y agoDo you honestly think people on dying on a Saturday and it's being logged as a Monday morning death because of the admin assistant? That's insane, and has no basis in reality.
- prepend 3y agoIt would be unusual that they use reporting date vs date of death. The date of death is pretty normally distributed [0]. So while the reporting date probably piles up on Mondays, that’s not very useful for studying. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/table14_99.pdf https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/table14_99.pdf (in the US at least)
- HL33tibCe7 3y agoDeadly heart attacks are also more common on days when the clocks go forward. It’s to do with lack of sleep, apparently.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago> when the clocks go forward I had a moment trying to figure out when the clocks moved backwards before I remembered DST is a thing.
- shagie 3y agoI once worked in a computer lab for a graveyard shift on the weekend (midnight to 10am). One early Sunday morning the clock started making noise. Chunk. Chunk. Chunk. Chunk. Moving the minute hand rapidly. It kept going and going and going. The clock can only go forward. In order to set the time back 1 hour it had to advance the clock 23 hours, one minute at a time. This also confused payroll when I handed in my time sheet. 12:00 AM - 3:00 AM (3h) 2:00 AM - 10:00 AM (8h) They also had trouble when I did 12:00 AM - 10:00 AM (9h) But they figured that it was going to be easier to just pay me an extra hour ($7.50 then) than it would have been to try to correct it.
- itronitron 3y agoA better solution would be to have the clock turn itself off, wait an hour, and then turn itself back on again.
- shagie 3y agoThis was a centrally controlled clock. When the master clock sent a pulse, all the clocks would advance 1 minute. These were synchronized wired clocks ( https://www.natsco.net/industries-served/industries-served-overview https://www.natsco.net/industries-served/industries-served-o... /// https://blog.american-time.com/wireless-master-time-clock-vs-wired-master-time-clock https://blog.american-time.com/wireless-master-time-clock-vs... ). > Schools traditionally used wired clock systems for two basic reasons: rock solid reliability and the ability to synchronize school bells to the rest of the system. The wired synchronized system ensured that clocks would all read the same time and bells would ring at the same time every day, no matter what classroom you were in, and that students would arrive to class on time — something teachers could only dream of before installing a synchronized system.
- ZFleck 3y agoI've read a bit into this subject before; Matthew Walker's book 'Why We Sleep'[0] discusses it at length. A lot of it boils down to blood pressure. High blood pressure is a serious contributing factor to cardiovascular incidents (as well as a slew of other negative health risks), and getting a good night's sleep will help keep blood pressure down. This is also why the amount of heart attacks are up around 24% after daylight savings[1]; an hour less sleep means higher blood pressure means higher risk of heart attack (relative to any other 'normal' day). I can definitely see how the same logic could apply to Mondays. Less sleep, more stress = higher blood pressure = higher risk of heart attacks. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34466963-why-we-sleep [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18971502/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18971502/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- kulahan 3y agoThe important consideration here is that these people are on the cusp of death already, and this is typically just the straw that broke the camel's back. You don't get a heart attack from one bad night of sleep, of course, unless there are significant underlying conditions.
- sramam 3y agoOn the flip side, isn't it also likely that repeating the same stressful behavior pattern over years (decades?) results in this outcome? However, parsing signal from noise does seem a very difficult proposition.
- marcosdumay 3y agoThis is where an intervention-based study shines. It's just basically impossible to design an intervention for this one. (But then, this also means that knowing it for sure would be useless.)
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- barbegal 3y agoThe headline is misleading. The actual study proved that the recorded date of admission to hospital in Ireland with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction was increased on a Sunday and Monday. Increased admissions on a Monday is not that unusual given that people often seek medical attention after the weekend but maybe more surprising is the increase on a Sunday. https://heart.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_3/A78 https://heart.bmj.com/content/109/Suppl_3/A78
- haldujai 3y agoFrom the methods section of the abstract: “We excluded post-fibrinolysis patients, patients with old stents, and those who presented more than 24 hours after the onset of pain.”[edit: I misread the PDF version which included multiple abstracts, the methods I’m referring to was from a separate study with the title cutoff, this specific abstract didn’t specify. But from below and table 1 in: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/201406 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/20140... which looked at 68,000 STEMIs, 3.1% presented > 12 hours and 8.4% had an unknown time of symptom onset. Wouldn’t explain the magnitude of effect seen in this study. Circadian effects on STEMI and increased incidence on Monday are not new observations.] Don’t think late presentation STEMIs are that common to begin with for your argument to have logical sense, this is the worst form of a “heart attack”. From this single center study presentations > 12 hours only comprised 10%. https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/jcarm/2017/00000018/00000008/art00001 https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/wk/jcarm/2017/0000001...
- barbegal 3y agoThanks for links to those extra studies. The 3.1% and 10% presented > 12 hours are averaged across all days of the week not just the Sunday to Monday gap which is likely to be greater given the reduction in public services in Ireland on a Sunday. Do you know of previous studies which report Monday as being particularly risky? I can only find references to time of day (circadian cycle) which obviously make sense given how many bodily processes are linked to a circadian cycle but I'm skeptical about a weekly cycle (which I find confusing to be referred to as circadian also)
- jimnotgym 3y agoThis contradicts some data released by 'The Cure'. Tuesday and Wednesday look much more risky. However 'The Boomtown Rats' seem to agree with the study.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoLooks like someone has a case of the Mondays! (I know I’ll get downvoted for using humor on HN, the “this isn’t Reddit no smiling” brigade will be here in a moment to express their scorn at any sign of pleasure)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- branon 3y agoIt's not humor in general that's disliked, it's seeing the same few dozen tired references that it's seen as normal to repeat ad nauseum on more social media type sites like reddit. That said, Office Space is my favorite movie so don't take it personally, mmkay? Yeahh, that'd be great.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoYeah I actually have never used Reddit so don’t know. I’m more a Usenet guy.
- robocat 3y agoLow value comments get downvotes - and most “funny” comments are about a zero on the funny scale (regardless that office space is fantastic). The point of the guidelines is to help reduce low value comments and on that note - mentioning voting is against the guidelines https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html for the same reason “Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.”
- dang 3y agoThe issue isn't humor, it's that people overestimate how funny their comments are. The best explanation of this was from scott_s years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289.
- iancmceachern 3y agoWork stress man, it'll kill you
- mstudio 3y agoThank goodness it's Tuesday!
- lukko 3y agoI definitely felt Mondays on-call were much busier in the hospital. I always thought this could be due to patients spending weekends with family, not wanting to cause a fuss and maybe ignoring symptoms of cardiac chest pain until it evolves into a serious heart attack (STEMI). Also, they may be waiting to see their GP on Monday morning and then get referred to hospital (although less likely with STEMIs). I also remember the time between Christmas and New Year being very busy - I thought for a similar reason - people understandably just don't want to be in hospital for Christmas.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI wonder if modern smartphones lay the groundwork for people knowing they're on the cusp of a heart attack. E.g., using sensors that are cheap, and are less invasive than EKG electrodes. Kinda like the way Apple watches can now continuously monitor stuff
- dividedbyzero 3y agoDoes an Apple Watch actually tell you if you are?
- Aeolun 3y agoIt monitors for atrial fibrilation using a single leak EKG I think. It is very clear about the fact it cannot detect a heart attack though. Then there’s these slightly more sophisticated things: https://store.kardia.com/products/kardiamobile6l https://store.kardia.com/products/kardiamobile6l
- rootusrootus 3y agoI don't believe it uses the EKG functionality to detect afib. I think it's just using some sort of machine learning on the data coming from the photoplethysmograph sensor (now that's a word I had to look up to remember the correct spelling for). Basically the sensor that takes your pulse. The EKG, as far as I know, doesn't really tell you much other than whether it thinks you have a normal sinus rhythm, or something it doesn't recognize. Too fast, too slow, or whatever. It's also on demand, not continuous. You have to touch a finger from your opposite hand to the crown, while the EKG app is running. Also, that Kardia advertising is borderline scam. It's a 1 lead EKG just like the Apple Watch. Six lead my ass, they make that claim because you can contort your body in enough ways to take readings from each standard EKG location. You can sorta do the same thing with an apple watch, though it's not physically as large so it wouldn't be as easy. What rubs me the wrong way about calling the Kardia a 6-lead EKG is that it cannot do 6-leads simultaneously, and I think that is a critical detail. I had a Kardia myself before the first Apple Watch with EKG came out.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- robotburrito 3y agoI'd be curious to know if these heart attacks happen equally in those that have to work from home vs those who have to commute to an office.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- xdavidliu 3y agoor equally in those that are retired
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoI would cynically suspect: existential dread
- JoeAltmaier 3y agoUsed to wonder why more hospital patients had critical episodes at night. My brother-in-law who's worked hospitals all his life, said simply "the night shift is on"
- xdavidliu 3y agonot entirely sure what this comment is saying. Night shift workers not as effective? Can someone spell it out for me?
- floxy 3y agoI'm going to presume the OP was hinting at people working night shifts are more sleep deprived, and thus more accident prone, causing the increase in emergency room visits.
- hugozap 3y agoI think total disconnection on weekends cause more stress on Mondays and that's why most people hate them, you need a lot more cognitive effort to resume work.
- zer0tonin 3y ago[flagged]
- lukko 3y agoSide note: there is also a stress-induced heart problem called tako-tsubo cardiomyopathy (aka 'broken-heart syndrome'), which also seems to be more common on Mondays. It's caused by sudden stress (e.g. bereavement, illness) which leads to weakening of the heart muscle, causing the heart to bulge out at the apex. It's named 'tako-tsubo' because the heart starts to resemble a round vessel used in Japan to catch octopuses. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takotsubo_cardiomyopathy
- sumedh 3y ago> causing the heart to bulge out at the apex. I dont know about bulging but when I experienced my first break up in the 20s, I literally felt a hole in my heart for many days. It was a surreal experience, for some reason my mind was just telling me that there is nothing there where my heart should be.
- macinjosh 3y agoWork is stressful
- thenerdhead 3y agoIn other words, work is literally killing us due to Sunday night syndrome and stress we are unaware of.
- cm2012 3y agoAlso, a surprising amounts of heart attacks are during sex. But I think the number one killer is shoveling snow! Basically any physical exertion for people who don't normally do physical exertion.
- wly_cdgr 3y agoAnything except another week with this lot
- elzbardico 3y agoI'd bet that probably alcohol and the consequent dehydration are one of the big drivers here. People severely underestimate how much alcohol can dehydrate someone.
- mahathu 3y agoThank god its Tuesday!
- seizethecheese 3y agoA lot of speculation here. Here’s a link to the actual study: https://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/109/Suppl_3/A78.full.pdf https://heart.bmj.com/content/heartjnl/109/Suppl_3/A78.full.... They don’t break it down by age which might help show if it’s work related. Heart attacks are also clearly elevated on Sundays, and not depressed on Saturdays, which might suggest this is related to alcohol.
- dokem 3y agoA case of the Mondays?
- Yondle 3y agoThis feels like something i’m going to log into the ‘why do i know this’ section of memory.
- jehb 3y agoI can't help but notice the poor air quality here on the US east coast today and wonder if any of the link can be explained by the exposure to pollutants due to commuting. It took me years to piece together that my chronic sinus issues and occasional heart palpitations were connected. Too much post nasal drip would end up filling my lungs with phlegm, leading to symptoms not all that different than COPD. It's not hard to imagine someone in poorer health having the same reaction in closer to real time on a Monday morning.
- rootusrootus 3y agoIn my experience post nasal drip shouldn't make it into your lungs, that sounds like a more serious problem.
- jehb 3y agoI'm not going to post my complete medical history on the internet, but suffice it to say I have some complicating factors.
- ozmaverick72 3y agoIs this similar to the story that it rains more on the weekend ? Didn't the analysis show that if you segmented the data into arbitrary chunks it always came back with higher rainfall at the start of end of the period - so if you broken the data up into blocks that went from Wednesday -> Tuesday it would come back and say it rains most on Wednesday. Wonder if something like that is going on here - I am down with the argument about stress and going back to work making it worse on a Monday :)
- whatever1 3y agoSorry I missed the joke. Why is that the case?
- motohagiography 3y agoSince Mondays are always three days after Fridays, it's pretty clear there is a correlation, the only real question is what's happening on the Fridays, and why would they try to hide that?
- qotgalaxy 3y ago[dead]