Looking forward to the big game on Sunday? Be careful! According to a new study, high-profile sporting events like the Super Bowl can trigger heart attacks in fans.

It's not the game itself, of course, that causes heart problems, but the emotional attachment fans have to their teams. When a beloved team loses, many fans experience emotional stress, and this stress can lead to an unhealthy rise in heart rate and blood pressure. For people with heart disease, or those at risk, the extra strain may be too much. This strain, and the heart attacks that can follow, are particularly prevalent during (and after) close, nail-biting games.

"Fans develop an emotional connection to their team...and when their team loses, that's an emotional stress," Robert A. Kloner, M.D. told CNN. ""There's a brain-heart connection, and it is important for people to be aware of that."

Kloner, a professor of cardiology at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, Los Angeles, is the lead author of the study published in the journal Clinical Cardiology.

To arrive at this conclusion, Kloner and a team of researchers analyzed death records in Los Angeles County the day of, and two weeks after, the 1980 and 1984 Super Bowls. They also studied the records from corresponding days in the years in between. The results? In 1980, when the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the L.A. Rams in the last quarter, 15% more women and 27% more men died from heart-related issues than men and women in 1981 and 1983. However, there were no increases in 1984 when the L.A. Raiders easily beat the Washington Redskins.

Of course, researchers don't know if the people who died in 1980 were Rams fans or if they even watched the Super Bowl. The fatty foods so common at Super Bowl parties may also have had something to do with the cardiac deaths. Even so, be careful guys! No game is worth dying for.

Source: CNN

Tags: super bowl, super bowl heart attacks, football, robert a. kloner, clinical cardiology
Categories: Men's health