This article was originally published by Matt Agorist at The Free Thought Project. 

In the post-COVID-19 aftermath, it seems like an article comes out every week detailing the new ways in which young people can have a heart attack. According to several analyses, there is a trend in which more young people appear to be suffering from heart attacks and strokes than before COVID-19. This has led to many experts calling for an investigation into this alleged uptick.

In one example, out of India, researchers found that the prevalence of young patients experiencing a heart attack during the COVID-19 pandemic was 11.5 percent out of 624 patients. Post pandemic and this number increased significantly to 13 percent out of just 443 patients.

According to the researchers:

We conducted a research during and after Covid pandemic. Young patients are coming up with all the spectrum of acute coronary syndrome that is ST – elevation Myocardial infarction, it’s a heart attack which causes 100 per cent occlusion of artery, then is NSTEMI- Non ST Elevation Myocardial infarction where there is a lack of blood flow to the subendocardium and cases of unstable angina (USA). Unstable angina is also a condition in which there is pain in the heart at rest or minimal exertion.

From the 1970s to the 2010s, the United States actually experienced declines in cardiovascular mortality but something began to change around 2012. While the above study found an increase in heart failure-related mortality post-COVID-19, it appears that in America, this trend has been seen for at least a decade.

“Thus, although declines in cardiovascular mortality between the 1970s to 2010s could signal success of targeted health policy interventions, use of guideline-directed medical therapy, and better mitigation of clinical risk, these data from recent years suggest challenges with the continued successful implementation of these strategies,”  Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, MD, MSc, and professor in the Division of Cardiology, Duke University School of Medicine, who authored a study highlighting this increase.

Older adults make up the majority of those diagnosed with heart failure, but an increasing proportion of younger adults are said to be diagnosed in recent years. There is limited data regarding heart failure-related mortality in these patients, making it important to quantify the scope of the issue to better inform health policy measures, the authors found.

Khan and his colleagues are not alone in trying to understand this recent uptick in cardiovascular problems in young healthy people. In fact, as TFTP reported late last year, the German newspaper, Berliner Zeitung, highlighted an “unusually large” increase in the number of cardiovascular events affecting healthy athletes.

According to research by Dr. Yaffa Shir-Raz, there was a “5-fold increase in sudden cardiac deaths of FIFA players in 2021.”

As Shir-Raz points out:

This figure is found to be statistically significant. In fact, there is no other year since 2001 where the difference between the number of observed cases of SCD/SUD and the expected number is statistically significant. In 2021 it is highly statistically significant and only likely to happen by chance about 2 in 1,000 times.

When folks began discussing this uptick in cardiovascular events last year, fact-checkers rolled out their army to shut down any discourse. Now, it has become common for newspaper articles to appear on a weekly basis speculating on seemingly benign activities that are allegedly causing this phenomenon.

This week, according to a new scientific statement from the American Heart Association, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Heart Association, Americans are 30% more likely to suffer heart attack or stroke, or death from either — if they are lonely.

“Over four decades of research has clearly demonstrated that social isolation and loneliness are both associated with adverse health outcomes,” said Crystal Wiley Cené, M.D., M.P.H., FAHA, chair of the writing group for the scientific statement, and professor of clinical medicine and chief administrative officer for health equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of California San Diego Health. “Given the prevalence of social disconnectedness across the U.S., the public health impact is quite significant.”

Yet another reason the pro-lockdown crowd should never be trusted again…

Other experts have claimed recently that simply napping could give you a stroke. People who often nap have a greater chance of developing high blood pressure and having a stroke, claim the authors of a study published last month in Hypertension, an American Heart Association journal.

“This may be because, although taking a nap itself is not harmful, many people who take naps may do so because of poor sleep at night. Poor sleep at night is associated with poorer health, and naps are not enough to make up for that,” said clinical psychologist Michael Grandner in a statement.

If the person was younger than age 60, napping most days raised the risk of developing high blood pressure by 20% compared with people who never or rarely nap, according to the study.

While napping and loneliness may go hand and hand, another recent article claims that simply experiencing joy could be cause for concern. Mubarak Hussein Sayed Abdel-Jalil, 22, had been waiting to hear the final mark after sitting his finals at the Faculty of Science of South Valley University in Qena, Egypt last month when he finally received them.

According to his family, when he opened the envelope to find out he passed, he was “overcome with joy” which led to a heart attack, killing him.

The list goes on. Apparently, cold showers, gout, eating meat, a slew of medications, and even climate change are all factors to watch out for if you are a healthy person trying to avoid dying from a heart attack.

Good luck.