Environmental factors that impact cardiovascular risk

Missing Cardiovascular Risk Factors

There are some environmental factors that impact cardiovascular risk, like cold weather and high temperature.

• Cold weather is associated with a higher risk for heart attack, each 10 degrees drop in temperature increases the risk by 7%. So the probability of getting a heart attack on a cold day is higher.
• Severe spikes in temperature increase the risk of heart attacks. I will mention two studies about that one from the USA and another one from Germany.
• The risk of heart attacks and stroke is highly associated with poor sleep.
• Women under 45 years old with diabetes have a six-fold risk of a heart attack.

Now let us talk about the studies which highlighted the correlation between global warming and hot climate and heart attacks,

Munich study in Germany between 1987-2014 they enrolled 27000 patients in this study where they found an increase in heat-induced heart attack risk especially in recent years, resulting from global warming but also a consequence of an increase in risk incidence of diabetes and hyperlipidemia, which made the population more susceptible to heat, though we have to take great consideration about high temperature as a potential trigger for heart attacks especially in view of climate changes.

Global warming will cause extreme weather events, so the fluctuation in outdoor temperature could potentially lead to an increased number of heart attacks and affect global cardiac health in the future.

Michigan study in the USA between 2010 – 2016 they enrolled 30000 patients in different 45 hospital in Michigan, they found that a greater temperature fluctuation was associated with a significantly higher rate of heart attack, so for every 9 degrees of temperature fluctuation there was 5 % increase of the risk of heart attack, especially when this swings of more than 45 degrees in comparison with swing between 18-45 degrees, and fluctuation in temperature were more likely to trigger heart attacks in warmer weather.

What is the meaning of daily temperature fluctuation?

It is defined as the difference between the highest and lowest temperature recorded on the day of the heart attack.

We should think about the impact of our environment on heart health because it is a cardiovascular risk like other known risk factors such as Hypertension – hypercholesterolemia – diabetes – smoking – obesity – sedentary life and inactivity – emotional and physical stress – positive family history and so on.

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