NYC Is Home Of The Heart Attack
(As reported 3/4/99)
Just when it looked like New York City had overcome its poor image - with cleaner streets and a lower crime rate - a new study suggests that just being in New York may be hazardous to your health.
CBS News Correspondent Randall Pinkston reports that heart attack death rates for New Yorkers are 55 percent higher than in other US cities, according to a California researcher.
The report says even tourists are susceptible: People visiting the Big Apple are 34 percent more likely to die of a heart attack than if they had visited another city.
"Leave your heart in San Francisco," said University of California at San Diego psychologist Nicholas Christenfeld, who will present his findings Friday at a meeting of the Society for Behavioral Medicine in San Diego.
Christenfeld based his data on 20 million U.S. death certificates from 1985 to 1994, focusing on heart attack fatalities.
He studied New Yorkers who died in the city; non-New Yorkers who died while visiting the city; and New Yorkers who died while traveling out of the city. About 44,000 tourists and the same number of New Yorkers died of heart attacks during the decade examined, many more than in any other city.
While the findings do not identify what it is about New York that leads to such a high risk, Christenfeld says stress is the likely factor.
"None of the other big cities showed the marked excess of heart attacks that New York had," he said. "It's not just an urban effect. It's something about New York. New York gives you the full experience: stress, excitement, pressure, density. This won't cause a heart attack in a healthy young person, but if you're at high risk and teetering on the edge of a heart attack, it could push you over."
Fran Reiter, president of the New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, called the study silly and suggested Christenfeld "get a life."
"New York is the most exciting place in the world," she said, noting that last year a history-making 34 million people visited the city. "People flock here for the experience."
However, the results came as no surprise to Sue Schonman, a broker who has been commuting to New York from Stirling, N.J., for the past nine years.
"We have to do this every day!" she said, pressing through the crowds to catch a train. "You have to endure a three-hour commute here just to have a life. Years of this really take it out of you."
Dr. Ward Casscells, professor and chief of cardiology at the University of Texas-Houston Medical School, called the study ingenious because it examined a transient risk, not long-term factors like smoking or poor diets.
He said business and pleasure travelers to New York engage in activities that increase their risk temporarily: lugging around heavy suitcases, eating fatty meals, rushing to appointments, or having a physical, romanic evening.
"It's a heart-stopping city," he said. "It's going to stimulate you, maybe to death."