Why watching your team win could give you a heart attack

Researchers show that the health of passionate sports fans is more at risk after witnessing a victory

DEDICATED sports fans have long known that passionately supporting their team through thick and thin can come at a cost.

But few would have predicted that doing so might cause them to suffer a heart attack – particularly when their team wins.

That, however, is the principal insight of research which has established a link between a club’s sporting victory and increased risk of heart attacks among its fans.

The risk was found to be particularly strong among men under 55. Female fans appeared not to be affected.

Scientists have long been aware of an association between major sports events and unhealthy behavioural changes, such as drinking alcohol and eating fatty foods. For the study, however, they set out to look for evidence that supporting a team may directly trigger a medical emergency.

The Montreal Canadiens are the oldest continuous professional ice hockey team in the world and their fans are renowned for their passion.

Researchers at the Montreal Heart Institute analysed admissions data for patients with St-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) – a serious type of heart attack – the day after the Canadiens played.

They found that in men under 55, a home victory was associated with a 40 per cent increase in STEMI admissions.

The association between losing games and hospital admissions was found to be not statistically significant and researchers were unable to explain why it was the successful matches that seemed more likely to prompt heart attacks. They noted, however, that other studies had shown that strong emotional responses may influence heart attack susceptibility, suggesting that watching a victory may be more emotionally significant than a defeat.

The fact that women appeared not to be medically affected by the result of the game was particularly striking as previous research had shown that they were more susceptible than men to mental stress-induced myocardial ischemia, which can also lead to a heart attack.

“The fact that game outcomes are unknown to the spectator until the end implies that emotional triggers at the end and/or after the match might impose a greater risk for vulnerable populations,”

‘Emotional triggers at the end and/or after the match might impose a greater risk for vulnerable populations’

the research team wrote in the Canadian Journal of Cardiology.

“This hypothesis is further supported by the notion that significant increases in STEMI hospital admissions occurred one day after a game in our study, while no difference in admission rates were observed on match days.”

While the research is the first of its kind to establish an ongoing association between sports results and the health of its fans, scientists have noticed effects following major one-off matches in the past.

When the Dutch football team was knocked out of the 1996 European championship following a penalty shoot-out against France, for example, there was a 50 per cent increase in deaths of Dutch men from heart attacks and strokes on the day of the match.

Scientists at the University Medical Centre in Utrecht blamed stress, high alcohol intake, overeating and excessive smoking during the game.