Deaths from heart disease go up during holidays due to rich food, alcohol and the season's stress and excitement, according to a new study.

The two riskiest days of the year for heart-related deaths Dec.25 and Jan. 1. Christmas and New Year's, it appears, can line up alongside smoking, obesity and high blood pressure as risk factors for cardiac mortality, said the study.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the increase in heart attack deaths has nothing to do with shoveling snow or coronary artery spasms caused by frigid weather, according to the study published in the latest journal Circulation.

In the study, researchers at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles examined L.A. County death records of 220,000 people who died of heart disease over a 12-year period.

The study found that heart disease deaths were 33 percent higher in December and January than they were from June through September -- even in Southern California's consistently mild climate.

Researchers speculated that some of the things that come with the season of joy may be playing a part in heart attack deaths including rich food, alcohol and the season's stress and excitement.

Dr. Robert A. Kloner, a cardiologist who led the study, advised that people try to avoid some of the known triggers of heart attack. They are too much food, salt, fat and alcohol.

"Avoid excess physical exertion, overeating, lack of sleep, emotional stress and anger. They have all been associated with cardiac events," he said.

Don't let a flood of social obligations let you forget to take medications for high blood pressure or high cholesterol, or get in the way of exercise routines, he advised.

"It's possible that more people die on the holidays because, in a festive mood, they put off seeing a doctor even in the face of a classic symptom," he said.

So eat right, exercise, take your medications, don't stress out over what the holidays are costing you and limit those actual grains of salt, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency December 17, 2007)