How coffee, sex, smog triggerheart attack

A MAJOR analysis of data on potential
triggers for heart attacks finds that many of
the substances and activities Nigerians
indulge in every day — coffee, alcohol, sex,
even breathing — can all help spur an
attack.
Because so many people are exposed to
dirty air, air pollution while stuck in traffic
topped the list of potential heart attack
triggers, with the researchers pegging 7.4
percent of heart attacks to roadway smog.
But coffee was also linked to five percent of
attacks, booze to another five percent, and
pot smoking to just under one percent, the
European researchers found.
Among everyday activities, exerting
yourself physically was linked to 6.2
percent of heart attacks, indulging in a
heavy meal was estimated to trigger 2.7
percent, and sex was linked to 2.2 percent.
The report was published in the February
24 online edition of The Lancet.
The researchers stressed that the risk for
heart attack from any one of these factors
to a particular person at any given time is
extremely small. But spread out over the
population, they can add up.
For example, air pollution is a minor trigger
for heart attacks, but since so many people
are exposed to smog, it triggers many more
heart attacks than other more potent
triggers, such as alcohol and cocaine.
Lead researcher and assistant professor of
epidemiology at the Hasselt Centre for
Environmental Sciences at Hasselt University
in Diepenbeek, Belgium, Tim S. Nawrot,
explained: “Small risks can be highly
relevant if they are widely distributed in the
population. ”
In their research, Nawrot’s team looked at
36 studies examining environmental
triggers for heart attacks. In their review,
known as a meta-analysis, the researchers
looked for common threads that could
establish how these factors might rank in
risk.
In terms of risk, the team found that air
pollution increased a person ’s risk of having
a heart attack by just under five percent. In
contrast, coffee increased the risk by 1.5
times, alcohol tripled the risk, and cocaine
use increased the odds for heart attack 23-
fold.
However, because only a small number of
people in the entire population are exposed
to cocaine, while hundreds of millions are
exposed to air pollution daily, air pollution
was estimated to cause more heart attacks
across the population than cocaine.
Even emotional states can sometimes
trigger a heart attack, the team found. For
example, negative emotions in general were
linked to almost four percent of heart
attacks while anger, specifically, was linked
to just over three percent. Even “good”
emotional states were tied to 2.4 percent of
heart attacks, the study authors noted.
Although exposure to secondhand smoke
was not included in the analysis, the effects
are probably of the same magnitude as air
pollution, the authors added. Where bans on
smoking in public places exist, the rate of
heart attacks has dropped an average of 17
percent, they noted.