Study Shows Risk of Heart Attack Greatest on Mondays

Here’s another reason to hate Mondays: The risk of a heart attack may be as much as 50% greater on Monday than on any other day.

Not surprisingly, though, this discovery only applies to people who work.

The findings, presented Monday at the annual scientific meeting of the American Heart Assn., have a serious side, however. For several years, researchers have been studying when heart attacks occur, because this can provide clues about precisely what triggers them. And that information will help doctors come up with new strategies to prevent heart attacks.

“This points to the role of changing activity levels in triggering cardiac events,” said Dr. Stefan N. Willich of the Free University of Berlin, who directed the study.

Willich and his colleagues kept track of all the heart attacks and coronary arrests over five years among 330,000 people who lived in the Augsburg area.

During this time, 5,596 attacks occurred. The researchers found that among working people, Mondays accounted for 18% of all heart attacks. Sunday was the safest with 12% of all attacks, or 50% less than on Mondays. Monday’s risk was 40% higher overall compared to the rest of the week, the researchers said.

However, for retirees and others who were not employed, there was no significant difference when heart attacks happened.

Experts said the trend is likely to be the same in any industrialized country that follows a Monday through Friday workweek.

And what about the most obvious solution to the Monday heart attack risk--staying home?

“I hate Mondays too,” Willich said. “But you’d just shift the bad day to Tuesday.”