As if you need another reason to hate Mondays — or something to add to your pile of “Sunday scaries” — a new study shows heart attacks are more common on Mondays than any other day of the week.
Researchers out of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust and the Royal College of Surgeons took a look at data from 10,528 patients from all over Ireland between 2013 and 2018, and noted that the most serious kind of heart attacks most commonly occurred on Mondays.
This falls in line with other studies looking into the so-called “Blue Monday” phenomenon; researchers are still guessing, but many think the difference in our sleep schedules from the weekend to the workweek could be a heart stressor.
Cardiac events on Sundays were also more common than the researchers expected, they say.
Professor Sir Nilesh Samani, medical director at the British Heart Foundation, noted, “This study adds to evidence around the timing of particularly serious heart attacks, but we now need to unpick what it is about certain days of the week that makes them more likely. Doing so could help doctors better understand this deadly condition so we can save more lives in future.”