More Evidence That Daylight Saving Time Leads to Heart Attacks

Daylight saving time doesn't simply just inconvenience you with the loss of an hour. The resulting loss of sleep can potentially disrupt your sleep cycle, ruining the restful nature of your sleep for days on end and significantly raise your risk of heart attack, according to new research.

The research was presented at the American College of Cardiology's 63rd Annual Scientific Session and adds to a growing pile of evidence that shows how daylight saving time is endangering the health of our hearts.

An MD Connects article earlier this March discussed a pair of scientific studies published in years past that sought to prove how daylight saving time is ruining the health of Americans. These studies focused primarily on how the annual clock-turning tradition puts potentially deadly strain on people's hearts.

Now, a study published in Open Heart, a British Medical Journal publication, has found an association between daylight saving time (DST) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) - also simply known as a heart attack.

According to the study, Michigan's BMC2 database, which collects data from every non-federal hospital in the state, was used to gather information on more than 42,000 heart attack patients between the start of 2010 and September 2013.

An analysis of the data revealed that within the 24 hours after turning our clocks back for Spring's daylight saving time, hospitals saw an estimated 25 percent increase in the number of heart attack cases, compared with any other Monday in a year. This proved consistent for all three years observed.

Interestingly, researcher found that at the end of day light saving time, when Americans turn their clocks forward, there was a 21 percent decrease in the number of heart attack cases for that first Tuesday.

These results mirror those of the previous studies, showing that the first 24 hours, if not the first week following losing an hour of sleep, people observing daylight saving time risk adverse cardiovascular events.

Still, this study goes on to show that the rise in heart attacks drops quickly tapers off after the initial spike in cases but remains higher than normal for at least several days, suggesting that the stress that a sudden change in sleep cycle places on a heart puts people initially predispositioned to heart disease at highest risk, while those with healthier hearts adjust more quickly to the change.

The study was published in Open Heart on March 30.