Essay by Eric Worrall

First published JoNova; If we don’t act quickly to prevent more global warming, we could all freeze to death.

HEALTH NEWS

DEC. 12, 2022 / 12:17 PM

Climate change could worsen heart deaths linked to extreme temperatures

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

Both extremely hot and very cold days take their toll on people who have heart disease, particularly those with heart failure.

A new multinational analysis of 32 million heart-related deaths over the past 40 years found more occurred on days with severe temperatures, an issue that climate change could make even worse.

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The investigators compared heart-related deaths on the hottest and the coldest 2.5% of days in 567 cities with those on days when temperatures were optimal.

For every 1,000 heart-related deaths, there were an additional 2.2 deaths on days with extreme heat. There were also 9.1 additional deaths on days with extreme cold, the findings showed.

Among people with heart failure, there were 2.6 additional deaths on extremely hot days and 12.8 on extremely cold days, the researchers reported.

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Read more: https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2022/12/12/climate-temperatures-heart-deaths/9511670858043/

The abstract of the study;

Associations Between Extreme Temperatures and Cardiovascular Cause-Specific Mortality: Results From 27 Countries

Barrak Alahmad, Haitham Khraishah, Dominic Royé, Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, Yuming Guo, Stefania I. Papatheodorou, Souzana Achilleos, Fiorella Acquaotta, Ben Armstrong, Michelle L. Bell, Shih-Chun Pan, Micheline de Sousa Zanotti Stagliorio Coelho, Valentina Colistro, Tran Ngoc Dang, Do-Van Dung, Francesca K. De’ Donato, Alireza Entezari, Yue-Liang Leon Guo, Masahiro Hashizume, Yasushi Honda, Ene Indermitte, Carmen Íñiguez, Jouni J.K. Jaakkola, Ho Kim, Eric Lavigne, Whanhee Lee, Shanshan Li, Joana Madureira, Fatemeh Mayvaneh, Hans Orru, Ala Vladimir Overcenco, Martina S. Ragettli, Niilo R.I. Ryti, Paulo Hilario Nascimento Saldiva, Noah Scovronick, Xerxes Seposo, Francesco Sera, Susana Pereira Silva, Massimo Stafoggia, Aurelio Tobias, Eric Garshick, Aaron S. Bernstein, Antonella Zanobetti, Joel D. Schwartz, Antonio Gasparrini and Petros Koutrakis

Originally published12 Dec 2022https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061832Circulation. 2022;0

Abstract

Background: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide. Existing studies on the association between temperatures and cardiovascular deaths have been limited in geographic zones and have generally considered associations with total cardiovascular deaths rather than cause-specific cardiovascular deaths.

Methods: We used unified data collection protocols within the Multi-Country Multi-City Collaborative Network to assemble a database of daily counts of specific cardiovascular causes of death from 567 cities in 27 countries across 5 continents in overlapping periods ranging from 1979 to 2019. City-specific daily ambient temperatures were obtained from weather stations and climate reanalysis models. To investigate cardiovascular mortality associations with extreme hot and cold temperatures, we fit case-crossover models in each city and then used a mixed-effects meta-analytic framework to pool individual city estimates. Extreme temperature percentiles were compared with the minimum mortality temperature in each location. Excess deaths were calculated for a range of extreme temperature days.

Results: The analyses included deaths from any cardiovascular cause (32 154 935), ischemic heart disease (11 745 880), stroke (9 351 312), heart failure (3 673 723), and arrhythmia (670 859). At extreme temperature percentiles, heat (99th percentile) and cold (1st percentile) were associated with higher risk of dying from any cardiovascular cause, ischemic heart disease, stroke, and heart failure as compared to the minimum mortality temperature, which is the temperature associated with least mortality. Across a range of extreme temperatures, hot days (above 97.5th percentile) and cold days (below 2.5th percentile) accounted for 2.2 (95% empirical CI [eCI], 2.1–2.3) and 9.1 (95% eCI, 8.9–9.2) excess deaths for every 1000 cardiovascular deaths, respectively. Heart failure was associated with the highest excess deaths proportion from extreme hot and cold days with 2.6 (95% eCI, 2.4–2.8) and 12.8 (95% eCI, 12.2–13.1) for every 1000 heart failure deaths, respectively.

Conclusions: Across a large, multinational sample, exposure to extreme hot and cold temperatures was associated with a greater risk of mortality from multiple common cardiovascular conditions. The intersections between extreme temperatures and cardiovascular health need to be thoroughly characterized in the present day—and especially under a changing climate.

Read more: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061832

Are the doctors seriously suggesting global warming is responsible for cold weather mortality? Also from the paper;

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Climate change produces both hotter summers and colder winters, rendering populations not accustomed to these unusual weather conditions vulnerable, especially in low-income areas where there may be less adaptability to changing conditions.

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Read more: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/epdf/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.122.061832 (full study PDF)

Strangely the message from climate scientists used to be that global warming would cause milder winters – hence all those hilarious “end of snow” predictions. Milder winters would have reduced winter mortality, and likely have reduced overall seasonal mortality, given that too cold seems to be worse for our health than too hot.

But that was yesterminute’s settled science.

Now the settled climate consensus appears to be that global warming causes all the bad weather, hot or cold. So when you feel the bitterness of a freezing cold winter, what you are really experiencing is life threatening global warming.