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Super Bowl Sunday and Your Heart


Did you see the last 35 seconds of Super Bowl 2008? Talk about a heart stopper! The Giants’ Manning to Burress touchdown knocked the wind out of me and the win from the Patriots. As I sat down to recover my cool, I remembered what Meyer Friedman, M.D. had to say about big-game sports and your heart. Dr. Friedman, in case you forgot, was the original Type A personality researcher and a pioneer in mind-body medicine. During the ten years I worked with him, we counseled heart patients to watch football games on TV with no sound. Yep, they had to put the remote on Mute! Why? The sound and rush of adrenaline during football games are enough to give you a heart attack.

Soccer tournaments can be just as lethal. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that Germans who followed the 2006 World Cup soccer matches had 2.66 times more serious heart problems on game days than non game days. Most at risk were people who had known heart disease. They had a 4 times greater incidence of cardiac emergencies! Why? Perhaps it was the combination of stress, forgetting to take medicines and eating more fatty junk food than usual.

If you or a loved one becomes too excited, angry or tense about a sporting event, remember…….it is just a game. Turn off the sound, walk outside for deep breaths of fresh air or give someone a hug. Your life is worth it.

One Response to “Super Bowl Sunday and Your Heart”

  1.   Superbowl Sunday and Your Heart by medTRIALS.info Says:

    [...] problems on game days than non game days. Most at risk were people who …Original post by Margaret delivered by Medtrials and [...]

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