Ask Dr. Maxwell

Fun Facts About Heart Health! (2)

A Cold Heart Isn’t Always a Bad Thing!

Therapeutic hypothermia is actually a form of treatment for cardiac arrest. According to American Heart Association guidelines for inducing hypothermia, doctors cool a patient’s body to 91 degrees F, 7 degrees below average, in order to slow damage to brain and other organs that begin when the heart stops and restarts.

Research published in the Annals of Neurology in late 2010 found that two-thirds of patients who received the therapy after revival from cardiac arrest recovered and went home with good heart function.

Monday is the Most Common Day of the Week for Heart Attacks

Mondays get a bad rap — Manic Mondays, Monday blues, case of the Mondays — but where heart health is concerned, maybe it’s deserved. Research has shown that more heart attacks occur on Mondays than any other day of the week. One 2005 study published in the European Journal of Epidemiology found that the incidence of heart attack was 20 percent higher in men and 15 percent higher in women on Mondays.

Some experts theorize that the spike has to do with the stress of returning to work after a relaxing weekend, while others correlate Monday heart attacks with the effects of boozy Saturday nights.

Other common heart attack days, unfortunately, are Christmas, the day after Christmas, and New Year’s.  Wow.

HAPPY HEALTHY HEARTS! – inside and out!