Shift work increases chance of heart attack by more than 20%

Having listened to the rantings of the lady outside the doctor's surgery (as mentioned in the previous post.) and mentioning as she did Continental Shift Patterns, I decided to put this into Google, and was somewhat shocked to come across the following item, from The Standard of 27th July, 2012:

Shift work raises the risk of having a heart attack, a major review of working pattern health effects has shown.

Working unsocial hours was found to increase the chances of a heart attack by more than a fifth, with the risk of a stroke rising by 5%.

Shift patterns, especially night shifts, have long been linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels and diabetes.

But experts have disagreed about their association with heart and artery disease.

The new research, the largest analysis of shift work and heart risk to date, pulled together evidence from 34 studies involving more than two million people.

Coronary events - including heart attacks and angina chest pains - and strokes were more common among shift workers.

The chances of "any coronary event" were increased by 24%, and of heart attacks by 23%, while stroke risk was raised slightly by 5%.

Despite the relatively small effect, the impact on a large population could be significant, the authors pointed out.

In Canada, where a number of the researchers were based, 7% of heart attacks could be attributed to shift work.

The scientists, led by Dr Daniel Hackam, from Western University in Canada, wrote in the British Medical Journal: "Shift work is associated with vascular events, which may have implications for public policy and occupational medicine."

Night shifts were associated with the steepest increase in risk for coronary events, 41%. But research found no link between shift work and higher death rates from any cause.

New Medications

I had  been for a Doctor's appointment on Monday. It took somewhere in the region of 40 minutes to get through to the surgery. You ring the number and the recorded voice says 'putting you through to the surgery' and then there's a pause . . .  That awful bland music really gets on your nerves. Why can't they play something different? Then you get told 'the surgery is experiencing a high level of calls. Please ring back later.' Then the thing hangs up, very unceremoniously, without any sort of apology and that's that. You just have to keep ringing and ringing until you get an answer. I got a 'call-back' eventually, then, when you DO get through (after being told you are being held in a queue!) you have to go through a menu, and work out what you want! By the time you do actually get through, you forget what you had rung for in the first place, as well as loosing the will to live!

I had made the appointment as I was concerned about the fact that the last time I had gone for a blood test the nurse couldn't  find a vein in my arm and gave up on the blood-taking. I was expecting to hear that she had sorted out some alternative to this, but as yet nothing. The doctor looked at my arm and said that he could see nothing wrong and that my veins were fine for taking blood. So I have made another appointment for this blood-test for this Monday morning. Let's hope that it's a little more successful than last time.

I haven't been able to sleep properly for around a month now. I wake up in the night and then can't get back to sleep. The doctor has put me on Citropram for this. I have started taking it. I also mentioned the fact that during my last medications review I was told I should be on a drug for my blood pressure (hypertension) and was given a prescription for Candesartan when I put in my last repeat prescription. I mistakenly thought it was a statin (which have caused many side-effects over the time I have been on heart medications) so didn't immediately have the prescription made up. The doctor told me I should resume taking it, so I have since had the prescription made up and began taking these tablets yesterday morning.