J Town 11/03, with News You Might Have Missed

Here's a new reason to look forward to the switch back to standard time Sunday morning: it may lower your chance of suffering a heart attack.

Heart attacks decrease by 5 percent the first Monday after the time change, and by 1.5 percent over that week, according to an analysis in [the] New England Journal of Medicine. The findings are based on 20 years of data from a Swedish registry of nine million residents.

It has been postulated that people in Western societies are chronically sleep deprived, since the average sleep duration decreased from 9.0 to 7.5 hours during the 20th century. Therefore, it is important to examine whether we can achieve beneficial effects with prolonged sleep. The finding that the possibility of additional sleep seems to be protective on the first workday after the autumn shift is intriguing. Monday is the day of the week associated with the highest risk of acute myocardial infarction, with the mental stress of starting a new workweek and the increase in activity suggested as an explanation.5 Our results raise the possibility that there is another, sleep-related component in the excess incidence of acute myocardial infarction on Monday.

From now until election day, J Town will Republish (and spotlight in our Got Post? table) personal stories of GOTV: phonebanking and canvassing and support. If you find such a story and you are a Contributor, Republish it to our group queue. If you are not a Contributor, message one of the Editors directly (don't message the Group because we will not get notified!) and we will Republish it. We are looking for personal stories of real life activism, not just links to phonebanking sites. Thank you in advance for your contributions!!