From the AMERICAN COLLEGE OF CARDIOLOGY and the “anything goes with climate change” department comes this absurd study. What the researchers seem to fail to realize is that just stepping outside from a heated house to the typical outdoor temperatures of any American winter are far more extreme than the 1 degree of climate change we’ve witnessed. In fact, snow shoveling is a major cause of heart attack.
Sudden exertion activities in cold weather can trigger a heart attack or sudden cardiac death. … Shoveling, even pushing a heavy snow blower, can cause sudden increase in blood pressure and heart rate, and the cold air can cause constriction of the blood vessel and decrease oxygen to the heart. – MetroHealth
Of course, they’ll try to tell you that more snow and less snow are signs of climate change too. And then there’s that famous chestnut “snowfalls are now just a thing of the past“. Since that hasn’t happened, now they just go straight for the temperature differential and skip the heart attack snow shoveling risk factor correlation. Although the study isn’t released yet (but this PR fluff is) I can’ say for sure, but it looks like they don’t consider activity during the heart attack at all; then there’s the location of the study, only in Michigan, where lake effect enhanced snowfalls are a common occurrence. The climate change correlation seems pretty darn thin.
Full disclosure, lest anyone accuse me of being insensitive, my father died in the winter of 1969, while walking from a heated car to a dance hall, doctors then said the cold then warm transitions were a trigger factor.
Heart attacks often follow dramatic changes in outdoor temperature
Findings suggest climate change may increase heart attack risk
WASHINGTON (March 1, 2018) — Large day-to-day swings in temperature were associated with significantly more heart attacks in a study being presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 67th Annual Scientific Session. Given that some climate models link extreme weather events with global warming, the new findings suggest climate change could, in turn, lead to an uptick in the occurrence of heart attacks, researchers said.
“Global warming is expected to cause extreme weather events, which may, in turn, result in large day-to-day fluctuations in temperature,” said Hedvig Andersson, MD, a cardiology researcher at the University of Michigan and the study’s lead author.
“Our study suggests that such fluctuations in outdoor temperature could potentially lead to an increased number of heart attacks and affect global cardiac health in the future.”
There is a large body of evidence showing that outdoor temperature affects the rate of heart attacks, with cold weather bringing the highest risk, but most previous studies have focused on overall daily temperatures. This new study is among the first to examine associations with sudden temperature changes.
“While the body has effective systems for responding to changes in temperature, it might be that more rapid and extreme fluctuations create more stress on those systems, which could contribute to health problems,” Andersson said, noting that the underlying mechanism for this association remains unknown.
Along with an overall warming trend, climate change is projected to lead to more extreme events, such as heat waves and cold snaps, depending on where someone lives, the researchers explained.
The research is based on data from more than 30,000 patients treated at 45 Michigan hospitals between 2010-2016. All patients had received percutaneous coronary intervention, a procedure used to open clogged arteries, after being diagnosed with ST-elevated myocardial infarction, the most serious form of heart attack.
The researchers calculated the temperature fluctuation preceding each heart attack based on weather records for the hospital’s ZIP code. Daily temperature fluctuation was defined as the difference between the highest and lowest temperature recorded on the day of the heart attack.
Overall, the results showed the risk of a heart attack increased by about 5 percent for every five-degree jump in temperature differential, in degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit). Swings of more than 25 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) were associated with a greater increase in heart attack rates compared to a smaller increase with temperature swings of 10 to 25 degrees Celsius (18-45 degrees Fahrenheit). The effect was more pronounced on days with a higher average temperature; in other words, a sudden temperature swing seemed to have a greater impact on warmer days.
At the far end of the spectrum, on a hot summer day, nearly twice as many heart attacks were predicted on days with a temperature fluctuation of 35-40 degrees Celsius (63-72 degrees Fahrenheit) than on days with no fluctuation.
“Generally, we think of heart attack risk factors as those that apply to individual patients and we have, consequently, identified lifestyle changes or medications to modify them. Population-level risk factors need a similar approach,” said Hitinder Gurm, MD, professor of medicine and associate chief clinical officer at Michigan Medicine and the study’s senior author.
“Temperature fluctuations are common and [often] predictable. More research is needed to better understand the underlying mechanisms for how temperature fluctuations increase the risk of heart attacks, which would allow us to perhaps devise a successful prevention approach.”
In their analysis, the researchers adjusted for precipitation totals, day of the week and seasonal trends to isolate the effects of daily temperature fluctuations from other potential environmental factors.
Gurm cautioned that the association does not necessarily prove that sudden temperature swings are the cause of the increase in heart attacks; other factors may have contributed to the results. He noted that it remains important to focus on modifiable cardiovascular risk factors such as smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Andersson will present the study, “Daily Temperature Fluctuations and Myocardial Infarction: Implications of Global Warming on Cardiac Health,” on Saturday, March 10 at 3:45 p.m. ET in Poster Hall A/B.
###
Apparently medical students have too much spare time on their hands.
http://www.fox8live.com/story/37640667/medical-students-march-for-universal-healthcare
They can help make it happen tomorrow. All they have to do is work “for free’ – pro bono medicine. Kinda like Gore giving up his private jet.
They have just demonstrated that talk is cheap, proof will take more.
One thing I am sure they have not checked – overall, the medical condition of the population has got worse, so this likely contributes more to increased heart attacks than weather.
Here’s something I saw elsewhere on a different subject but I thought it relevant to some of the ClimateChange™ alarmists and well-meaning, but duped enviros.
Thomas Sowell wrote in Intellectuals and Society:
“If you happen to believe in free markets, judicial restraint, traditional values, [etc.]… then you are just someone who believes in free markets, judicial restraint and traditional values. There is no personal exaltation resulting from those beliefs. But to be for “social justice” and “saving the environment” or to be “anti-war” is more than just a set of beliefs about empirical facts. This vision puts you on a higher moral plane as someone concerned and compassionate, someone who is for peace in the world, a defender of the downtrodden…”
“In short, one vision makes you somebody special and the other vision does not. These visions are not symmetrical.[…] Because the vision of the anointed is a vision of themselves as well as a vision of the world, when they are defending that vision they are not simply defending a set of hypotheses about external events, they are in a sense defending their very souls – and the zeal and even ruthlessness with which they defend their vision are not surprising under these circumstances.“
Narcissist personality disorder is the correct term for Social Justice Warrior syndrome.
“People with narcissistic personality disorder believe they are superior or special, and often try to associate with other people they believe are unique or gifted in some way. This association enhances their self-esteem, which is typically quite fragile underneath the surface.”
For many years I have enjoyed reading Thomas Sowell’s writings, both essays and books. It was a sad day when he finally decided to retire, though, Lord knows, he deserves the rest. Mr Sowell is one of our contemporary geniuses.
When the issue of individual sudden temperature change (of 10’s of degrees temperature in a few minutes) is conflated with climate change (several degrees temperature in a century) you can be assured you have found a rent-seeker.
Repeat after me: Corellation does not imply causation.
Correlation vs. Causation
Usually a researcher will start with some sort of reasoning that an observed thing is caused by one or more other things. The thought is that those things do cause, or greatly influence, the thing of interest. If testing the idea does produce a high correlation the hypotheses is supported, and perhaps, further examination is justified. Other things need to be done — see the many statements by Richard Feynman on how to proceed.
Correlation does not prove causation, but it often tells you were to look for it.
Correlation does imply causation, however you still have to prove it.
Sometimes it just leads you up the garden path as well and there are plenty of science examples of it.
There is no question that burning fossil fuel has caused an increase of death from heart attack, because it has extended life expectancy. You are also at greater risk of dying of cancer for the same reason – because something else didn’t kill you sooner.
So we should keep our building heating or cooling within 10 degrees of the outside temperature?
Human carbon causes heart attacks it is known!!! Hello?!? We’re no longer dim witted beings attributing everything to the all mighty sun or to the gods?!?
/SARC
The fact is that the daily temperature range has decreased, not increased, as daily lows are higher than before. So if the authors are correct, then climate change should decrease heart attacks due to smaller temperature shifts.
This paper:
D. Onozuka and A. Hagihara, “Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest risk attributable to temperature in Japan”, Scientific Reports (2017), 7:39538 DOI: 10.1038/srep39538. http://www.nature.com/articles/srep39538
analyzed more than 650,000 cases of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest admissions (OHCA) in Japan from 2005 to 2014. The substantial impact of low temperatures is indicated by this extract from the abstract:
“Overall, 23.93% (95% empirical confidence interval [eCI]: 20.15–26.19) of OHCA was attributable to temperature. The attributable fraction to low temperatures was 23.64% (95% eCI: 19.76–25.87), whereas that of high temperatures was 0.29% (95% eCI: 0.21–0.35). The attributable fraction for OHCA was related to moderate low temperature with an overall estimate of 21.86% (eCI: 18.10–24.21).”
The authors show that the optimum temperature (minimum heart attack rate) is 29 C, very close to the high end of the temperature range of all heart attacks studied which was from 0 C to 32 C.
Many, many other studies show the increased rate of heart attacks in cool/cold weather.
I saw a study that claimed that climate change would increase crime rates because more crimes are committed when it’s warm outside than when it’s cold. Ugh.
Are there different treatments for climate change heart attacks and the old regular type heart attack?
Someone help me here please.
“Along with an overall warming trend, climate change is projected to lead to more extreme events, such as heat waves and cold snaps,”
Of course, this is not the first time I’ve seen this claim in alarmist literature. But I’ve never seen an explanation of WHY climate change (at least the kind of climate change attributed to man-made carbon dioxide) would cause “extreme events” in weather. In particular, why would man-made climate change cause larger day-to-day, or within-day temperature fluctuations, the kind of fluctuations that apparently cause heart attacks? In fact, it seems to me that the opposite would be more likely. As atmospheric carbon dioxide increases, day-to-day and within-day temperature fluctuations would decreases, even as average temperatures increase. I have long understood (and understood alarmists to agree) that the way greenhouse warming works is, the coldest times and localities warm more than the warmest times and localities. Midnight temperatures will increase more than noon temperatures for a given locality; January temperatures will increase more than July temperatures; and Arctic temperatures will increase more than tropical temperatures (though the latter has little to do with my argument here). Do I understand it correctly? If so, then the “swings” in temperature, at all time scales shorter than say decadal, and in particular at the day-to-day and within-day scale, will be minimized.
But the fact that alarmists keep CLAIMING climate change will result in more extreme events leads me to believe they at least have SOMETHING to support that claim. Some scientific theory, at least, if not empirical evidence. I mean, it can’t be just the models, because every time someone criticizes the failure of the models to predict “the pause”, alarmists defend the models with claims that they weren’t meant to predict short-term variability in weather. So where the heck do they get this idea that climate change causes more extreme swings in temperature?
Last November my doctor discovered I had blocked arteries in my heart. (All I felt was occasional mild discomfort.) I was whisked into hospital for a triple bypass op. Undoubtedly all the result of Global Warming.
Can I sue someone? Exxon Mobil, perhaps?
A climate change heart attack is a change of heart by a climate doomsayer
I thought a climate change heart attack is modelled as opposed to measured and naturally if there is a difference the model is correct.