Holiday Heart sounds nice but it has nothing to do with love.

It’s when the heart rhythm becomes irregular.  This can happen after a binge drink but does happen more often on holidays, and during the holidays, because of the other factors:  caffeine, stress (relatives), and rich diets with added salt.   Over-indulging in food or drink can also put stress on the heart, especially in people with risk factors such as high blood pressure.

These same factors are also responsible for an interesting statistic that Christmas is peak time to have a heart attack.

While it could be enough to leave it with these risk factors, it is also worth highlighting that other substances, such as cocaine in particular, increase risk of heart attack and arrhythmias, particularly in young people, and the risk increases when combined with other substances and alcohol.

Fádo, Fádo when I was a young trainee, I was on-call over the holidays in one of those hospitals where there weren’t alot of doctors in the hospital on-call.  A patient was brought in by their friends one night.  They were sweating, short of breath, grabbing their chest.  Their heart was racing.  I’d like to point out that the patient was relatively young, in their 30s.  They had clearly been drinking and there was a fine white powder stuck to their philtrum (That’s one for your Christmas trivia:  philtrum is the skin between the base of your nose and your upper lip.)  In spite of the obvious in front of me – and a pulse of 180 – I decided to make no assumptions and asked the patient if they had taken any substances that evening. The patient shook their head:  none at all.  Naive as I might have been back then, even I had my doubts.  Which were well-founded when one of his friends burst in past security screaming:  “You *bleep* You took all the *bleep* cocaine!”  

An irregular heart beat can feel like palpitations, racing heart, dizziness, chest pain or weakness. Symptoms of a heart attack include: Chest discomfort that may feel like pressure, tightness, pain, squeezing or aching.  Women often report less typical sensations, such as sharp pain felt in the neck, arm or back.  The discomfort can spreads to the shoulder, arm, back, neck, jaw, teeth or sometimes the upper belly.  People with heart attack may have cold sweat. feel tired, or have heart bur.  They may feel weak or dizzy, nauseated, or short of breath.  Sometimes the symptoms come on suddenly, or come on slowly over hours or days.

What to do if you are concerned?  Seek qualified medical help.

What not to do if you are concerned?  Do not crowd-source “Should I seek medical help?” from social media.  Do not put off seeking medical attention because you don’t want to be a bother or ruin the family’s Christmas dinner.  They will understand.  They will want you to get help – unless, perhaps, you take all the *bleep* cocaine.

For more information you can trust on heart health, check out Irish Heart Foundation  or Croi

Healthy Holiday is a virtual advent calendar focusing on looking after your health this season.