Did you know # 18: Crisis Monday
If, like us, you hate Mondays for no apparent reasons, and if they make you feel good about it, this is information that will touch you right in your heart. If you were to die of a heart attack, there is a strong (bad) chance that it will be a Monday: it is indeed the day of the week when most infarction occurs!
The day of the moon (moon-di, moon-day), traditionally, represents the beginning of the work week, but contrary to what is usually believed, it is not necessarily the first day of the week For a long time, Sunday was considered the first day, and it is only recently, presumably because of work and by convention, that one begins to regard Monday as the beginning of a new week.
Monday assassin
It is also the most deadly day of the week, at least, concerning heart disease. Heart attacks can appear sudden and unpredictable from the outside, but from the inside (at the level of the arteries and veins), they are nevertheless relatively predictable. Coronary heart disease (including heart attacks - not infractus - myocardium and angina pectoris) are the main causes of heart attack: for many years, fat deposits develop on the wall of an artery, up to that one day the clot thus formed or part of it breaks off and stops the blood flow (by obstructing for example an artery) in a specific place. Irrigated areas begin to degenerate due to lack of oxygen. During a heart attack, the heart itself is no longer properly irrigated: it slows down, loses its rhythm, and finally stops. Heart attacks are the causes amongthe most frequent deaths , and they are explained by considering the patient's history and its characteristics (internal causes: cholesterol levels, diabetes, family at risk ...). But why does this phenomenon occur up to 20% more frequently on Mondays?
Stress is mainly in question: after a well deserved rest on weekends, the return to work on Monday is often the cause of a state more conducive to the crisis: stress increases the heart pressure by releasing including adrenaline, stimulating. Altered blood flow increases the risk of thrombosis (detachment of a fatty clot) and rupture of blood vessels. Heart diseases are more likely the day the majority of people find the stress of their work (who said that " work is health "?).
Other murderous days?
Stress is not unique to Monday, and healthy behaviors that prevent heart attack sometimes stop during the year. For these reasons, we find in the statistics of heart attacks, peaks during which the crisis rate increases significantly: this is the case of end-of-year holidays , during which we face the stress of family meetings ( 48% of adults with high blood pressure), or those who drink more, eat more (62%), smoke more ... and exercise less (29%) [1]. But the crisis also lurks during particularly intense eventslike ... the final of the Football World Cup or the Krach Stock Exchange showing a crisis, financial, this time. It is not for nothing that we speak of crisis in both cases! The attack rate is also higher during the winter than during any other season.
nst noise pollution (especially that coming from road traffic), indicating that at times when people move the most (with their procession of noises, vociferations, horns , etc.), the risk increases by 12% per 10 decibels.
For even a little more obscure reasons, heart attacks occur more in the morning, rather than in the afternoon or evening (up to 40% more!). We knew it well: something, always and inevitably, makes us want, on Monday morning, to postpone the work of the day to return under the jacket, to pay a third day of weekend *.