That “Monday morning feeling” could
be a crushing pain in the chest which leaves you sweating and gasping for
breath. Recent research from Germany and Italy shows that heart attacks are
more common on Monday mornings and doctors blame the stress of returning to
work after the weekend break.
The risk of having a
heart attack on any given day should be one in seven, but a six-year study
helped by researchers at the Free University of Berlin of more than 2,600
Germans showed that the average person had a 20 per cent higher chance of
having a heart attack on a Monday than on any other day.
Working Germans are
particularly not protected against attack, with a 33 per cent higher risk at
the beginning of the working week. Non-workers, by comparison, appear to be no
more at risk on a Monday than
any other day.
A study of 11,000 Italians proved 8
am on a Monday morning as the most stressful time for the heart, and both
studies showed that Sunday is the least stressful day, with fewer heart attacks
in both countries.
The findings could lead to a better
understanding of what is the immediate cause of heart attacks, according to Dr
Stefan Willich of the Free University. “We know a lot
about long-term risk factors such as smoking and cholesterol(胆固醇)but we don’t know what actually
causes heart attacks, so we can’t give clear advice on how to prevent them,” he
said.
Monday mornings have a
double helping of stress for the working body as it makes a rapid change from
sleep to activity, and from the relaxing weekend to the pressures of work.
“When people get up,
their blood pressure and heart rate go up and there are hormonal(内分泌)changes in their bodies,”
Willich explained. “All these things can have an unfavourable effect in the
blood system and increase the risk of a clot(血凝块)in the arteries(动脉)which will cause a heart attack.”
“When people return to
work after a weekend off, the pace of their life changes. They have a higher
workload, more stress, more anger and more physical activity,” said Willich.
1.Monday morning feeling, as this passage
shows, .
A. is not so serious as
people thought
B. is harmful to working people
in developed countries.
C. is the first killer
in Germany and Italy.
D. is created by
researchers in Germany and Italy
2.To protect people from
suffering from heart attack, doctors have paid much attention to
. A. people’s working time B.
people’s living place
C. people’s diet and lifestyle D.
people’s nationalities
3.It can be learned from this passage that
heart attack has nothing to do with .
A. blood pressure
B. heart rate C. hormonal changes D. blood group
4.If the researchers give us some advice to
avoid Monday morning feeling, what might it be?
A. Stop working on Monday
B. Create a pleasant working environment
C. Get up late on Monday
morning D. Go to work with a doctor