A Kingston, Ont., cardiologist is the first to prove what we all assumed: shoveling snow can kill you. And it took a newcomer from Argentina to figure this out.
Dr. Adrian Baranchuk had heard that shoveling causes heart attacks, and when eight such patients turned up on his ward one day he tried to look up the scientific evidence to get the details. Only there wasn't any.
Meanwhile, the continent's two big associations of cardiologists both had guidelines warning heart patients not to shovel. Baranchuk couldn't under-stand how all those cardiologists could give people advice without any studies to base it on.
That set him in motion. He searched through Kingston General's records for two winters, starting after the first snowfall each year and adding up the heart attacks - exactly 500, as it turned out.
Then he looked closer. Thirty-five of them, or seven per cent, had started when the patient was shoveling.
Baranchuk blames the cold air, the burst of start-and-stop effort and the fact that many people shovel without warming up their muscles first.
The danger is four times greater for men than women and also four times greater for those with a family history of heart trouble.
"It was a little bit surprising that a non-Canadian decided to run the study," he said.
Baranchuk also teaches medicine at Queen's University. © Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun
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Poster Comment:
Taking some deep breaths before shoveling should saturate the blood with O2 and make it easier on the heart.