14 DAY TRIAL // There are six days and fourteen hours left until the opening ceremony of the Super Bowl and for those wondering what does this have to do with science, know that a new study concluded that during this event, if the home team loses, the risk of people undergoing cardiac deaths rises.
Sports fans are very passionate people and most of them get emotionally involved in watching their favorite teams play, which is a good thing in case of a victory.
But Robert A. Kloner, MD, PhD, of the Heart Institute, Good Samarian Hospital and Keck School of Medicine at USC in Los Angeles, leader of this research, says that a Super Bowl loss for a home team is associated with higher death rates in both men and women as well as in the elderly.
When the team loses, some of its most committed fans can suffer from a high degree of emotional stress, which can translate into very high risks of cardiac death.
The researchers ran regression models for mortality rates connected to cardiac dysfunctions, for the 1980 Los Angeles Super Bowl loss and for the 1984 Los Angeles Super Bowl win.
They concluded that the Los Angeles Super Bowl loss of 1980 rose cardiac death rates in men and women and triggered more death in older than younger patients.
More precisely, the Super Bowl loss was associated with a fifteen percent increase in all circulatory deaths in men, and a twenty-seven percent increase of circulatory deaths in women.
It is rather interesting that football and soccer affect female fans differently, as previous reports from soccer games found that male fans were the most affected by the results of their team.
As for older patients, the Super Bowl loss caused a twenty-two percent increase in circulatory deaths.
On the other hand, the Los Angeles Super Bowl win of 1984 seemed to reduce deaths rates, especially in women and in the elderly.
Kloner says that “physicians and patients should be aware that stressful games might elicit an emotional response that could trigger a cardiac event.
“Stress reduction programs or certain medications might be appropriate in individual cases.”
This study is published in the journal Clinical Cardiology.