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It seems the risk of heart attack increases right after a loved one has died, according to a new study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association.
1,985 adult heart attack survivors surveyed indicates an increase of 21 times the regular risk of heart attack the day after a loved one dies. The risk then goes down to six times normal after a week and remains relatively high for at least a month. Within the first week, one additional person out of 320 or out of 1394 dies after a loved one does (variations depend on baseline risk of heart complications).
An implication of this study is that individuals in mourning should take care of their bodies and not disregard physical symptoms as mere signs of psychological stress. This is because stress may increase the heart rate, blood pressure, and blood clotting. The study's authors advise mourners to keep up with their medications, even though the study itself did not draw a definitive line between heart attacks and medication usage.
This is the first study to look at heart attack risk after the death of a loved one. However, other studies have linked a generally heightened risk of death to the death of a loved one.
Studies have also been written about stress-induced cardiomyopathy, which is similar to a heart attack but is not connected to coronary artery disease.
The study's authors look forward to a larger study in which they survey heart attack patients and look for whether someone close to them had died just before the cardiac episode.
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