US: Christmas is the deadliest day of the year for Americans, with 12.4 per cent more deaths than normal, according to researchers.
More Americans die from heart attacks and other natural causes on Christmas Day, the day after and on New Year's Day than on any other days of the year, they said. It is probably because people are feeling too busy or too festive to go to the hospital, the researchers wrote in yesterday's issue of the journal Circulation.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego and Tufts University in Boston, found a 4.65 per cent increase in heart deaths and just shy of a 5 per cent increase in non-heart deaths over the 14 days spanning the December holidays. They did not count suicide, murder or accidental deaths.
"There is a general tendency for cardiac and non-cardiac deaths to peak during the winter," they said, "but above and beyond this seasonal increase, there are additional increases in heart attack and other deaths around Christmas and New Year's." - (Reuters)