That “Monday morning feeling” could be a crushing pain in the chest which leaves you sweating and gasping for breath. Recent research from Germany and Italy shows that heart attacks are more common on Monday mornings and doctors blame the stress of returning to work after the weekend break.
The risk of having a heart attack on any given day should be one in seven, but a six-year study helped by researchers at the Free University of Berlin of more than 2,600 Germans showed that the average person had a 20 percent higher chance of having a heart attack on a Monday than on any other day.
Working Germans are particularly not protected against attack, with a 33 percent higher risk at the beginning of the working week. Non-workers, by comparison, appear to be no more at risk on a Monday than any other day.
A study of 11,000 Italians proved 8 am on a Monday morning as the most stressful time for the heart, and both studies showed that Sunday is the least stressful day, with fewer heart attacks in both countries.
The findings could lead to a better understanding of what is the immediate cause of heart attacks, according to Dr Stefan Willich of the Free University. “We know a lot about long-term risk factors such as smoking and cholesterol（膽固醇）but we don’t know what actually causes heart attacks, so we can’t give clear advice on how to prevent them,” he said.
Monday mornings have a double helping of stress for the working body as it makes a rapid change from sleep to activity, and from the relaxing weekend to the pressures of work.
“When people get up, their blood pressure and heart rate go up and there are hormonal（內(nèi)分泌）changes in their bodies,” Willich explained. “All these things can have an unfavourable effect in the blood system and increase the risk of a clot（血凝塊）in the arteries（動脈）which will cause a heart attack.”
“When people return to work after a weekend off, the pace of their life changes. They have a higher workload, more stress, more anger and more physical activity,” said Willich.
【小題1】．Monday morning feeling, as this passage shows, .
| A．is not so serious as people thought |
| B．is harmful to working people in Germany and Italy |
| C．is the first killer in Germany and Italy. |
| D．is created by researchers in Germany and Italy |
【小題2】．To protect people from suffering from heart attack, doctors have paid much attention to .
| A．people’s working time | B．people’s living place |
| C．people’s diet and lifestyle | D．people’s nationalities |
【小題3】．It can be learned from this passage that heart attack has nothing to do with .
| A．blood pressure | B．heart rate | C．hormonal changes | D．blood group |
【小題4】．If the researchers give us some advice to avoid Monday morning feeling, what might it be?
| A．Stop working on Monday | B．Create a pleasant working environment |
| C．Get up late on Monday morning | D．Go to work with a doctor |
【小題5】.Which of the following is true according to the passage?
| A．The risk of having heart attacks on Monday mornings is the same as on any other day of the week to non-workers |
| B．33% of the Germans have heart diseases, therefore heart attacks are more common in Germany than in any other country. |
| C．20%of the Italians appear to have higher possibility of having heart attacks. |
| D．Non-smokers are more likely to have heart attacks on Sundays. |
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