An hour lie-in on Monday mornings can reduce heart attack risk

London, Nov 2 : An hour's lie-in on Monday mornings can help cut the risk of having a heart attack, suggests a new study.

According to boffins, Mondays are a peak time for heart attacks due to the stress of the morning commute, the first workday of the week and fatigue from the weekend.

To reach the conclusion, the research team examined the number of heart attacks suffered in the week after the Spring and Autumn clock changes, compared to the same days of the week at other times.

After analysing, the research team found that the number of heart attacks increased in the days after the clocks went back in the Spring and decreased slightly on the Monday following the Autumn change when the clocks go forward by an hour.

The suggestion is that sleep deprivation may have an effect on heart health and increase the likelihood of having a heart attack. So the extra hour's sleep after the Autumn clock change could be why there is a reduction in heart attacks after the switch.

"We can hypothesize that it is only Monday where the extra hour of sleep does matter. Sleep diary studies suggest later bedtimes and wake up times on weekend days, thus earlier wake up at the first working day causes minor sleep deprivation in certain individuals and Monday is the day where most of us will use this extra hour," the Telegraph quoted study author Imre Janszky, of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, as saying.

The findings, which were only seen in people aged under 65, suggest that they were of working age, and not in older people, who were likely to have been retired.

ANI