Holiday Heart Syndrome — it's real

[KARE 11, December 05, 2019] Some doctors say they see more heart attacks on Christmas Day than any other time of the year.

Dr. Nick Burke, who specializes in interventional cardiology with Allina Health at the Minneapolis Heart Institute, says holidays are stressful which can lead to what he calls "Holiday Heart Syndrome."

"It is not just your mom, everyone has stress during the holidays. There are all sorts of families and extremely high expectations as to how great your holiday should be," Burke said. "At times of stress like that, people have more illnesses but particularly cardiovascular illnesses.More heart attacks happen on Christmas day more than on any other day of the year. Christmas day you would think that people are being happy and all of that stuff but there are a lot of aspects to that."