It was 19 to 20 percent above the daily average for men and women under age 50 who had never gone to a hospital for heart disease, the team reports. People who died in the hospital or who had been treated at a hospital for heart disease were no more likely to die on a Monday than on any other day of the week. Another team of investigators examined the timing of arrhythmias in 683 patients with implanted defibrillators to shock their heart out of the irregular heartbeat. Only the small group of patients taking beta-blockers had no Monday peak. Most of the patients were elderly and probably unemployed, so the researchers couldn't blame job stress, they write.
Studies show that cardiac deaths are most likely to occur in the morning and in the winter.
This is most likely because the body is probably responding to external and internal cycles and rhythms. But the fluctuations linked to the week, as opposed to circadian rhythms and seasonal changes, is harder to understand. Of course, weekend drinking might play a role in the high rate of deaths on Monday, as Evans and other researchers have proposed. But Martyn, associate editor of the British Medical Journal , has another idea. If it's any comfort, even financial markets don't do well on Monday, Martyn notes.