With winter and the holiday season well underway, so is cold weather, warm drinks and plenty of frenzying, which together can be dangerous, or even fatal, to some with heart conditions.
Between Christmas and New Year's, more people die from heart-related complications than at any other time of the year, research shows. Low outdoor temperatures, increased alcohol intake and holiday stress have, for decades, been leading factors of what medical experts call "holiday heart syndrome."
Between 1979 and 2001, 53 million deaths due to cardiac arrest were attributed to the holiday heart syndrome, according to a 2004 study published in the American Heart Association's journal "Circulation." And a more recent 2018 study, conducted in Sweden, found that between 1998 and 2013, there was a 15% increase in heart attacks during the winter holiday season.
Dr. Keith Churchwell, a former volunteer president of the American Heart Association, said holiday heart syndrome is a "constellation of medical diseases," including atrial fibrillation (heart arrhythmia), heart failure and myocardial infarction (heart attack).
Here's what to know about the dangerous, and sometimes deadly, holiday heart syndrome.
