Smoking After Sex: A Double Heart Attack Risk? Okay.
Now that I have your attention.... Sure,
we all know that smoking significantly increases the risk of having
a heart attack...but sex? Well a study, published
in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
looks at this topic, in an article titled, "Association
of Episodic Physical and Sexual Activity With Triggering of Acute
Cardiac Events". And it's a topic that a not insignificant number
of readers writing into Angioplasty.Org's
Patient Forum are concerned
about.
It's not exactly a new thought. Back in 2004, we linked
to this
New York Times article which
reported on a 1996 study; it basically came to the same conclusions.
But two Tufts researchers
looked at 14 studies in the published medical literature and came up
with statistical values
that put a relative risk number on these activities.
So (drum roll,
please...) episodic physical activity increased one's heart attack
risk by 345% -- and episodic sexual activity increased it by 270%.
Sounds scary, except that the authors emphasize that these risks
are actually not high, because they are transient (occurring during
or close to
the activity) and
"because exposure to physical and sexual activity is infrequent."
(This study looked at 55-64 year-olds, so I'm not even gonna go
there!) Because of these factors, the researchers also stated that
the absolute risk increase for heart attack associated with 1 hour
of additional physical or sexual activity per week was
estimated as 2 to 3 per 10 000 person-years. Comforting.
The most important finding, however, was that these risks
were significantly reduced in people who normally had high levels
of habitual physical activity (we would assume that includes sexual
activity).
On a serious note, these questions are of real
concern to heart patients. Our Patient Forum gets queries like this
one last weekend in our topic on "Angioplasty
Recovery Period":
"Delicate subject....How soon after having
a stent is it safe for a man to have sex & if another stent
is needed in a few weeks, is it safer to wait till after that?" -- Broken Hearted, Australia
For Broken-Hearted and other patients, we recommend your
cardiologist as the person to ask -- he or she has your records and
knows your
clinical health status and can make recommendations regarding both
physical and sexual activity. As the research study states, the better
shape you're in, the less the risk.
For more information from the Tufts researchers, Drs.
Issa J. Dahabreh and Jessica K. Paulus, check out the video below, courtesy
of JAMA.