Heavy meal bad for your heart

BOSTON - Eating an unusually heavy meal does not just add calories, it also might trigger a heart attack, especially in people who already suffer from heart disease.

A study has found that heart attack risk jumps four times in the two hours after a large meal.

A very large meal may start the whole process of a heart attack, said Dr Francisco Lopez-Jimenez, of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

Eating heavy meals would be most dangerous for people who already had heart disease, because their overall risk was higher from the start.

"Overeating should be considered as a heart attack trigger, much in the same way as extreme physical activities and severe anger episodes."

He and colleagues interviewed nearly 2000 patients shortly after they had had heart attacks.

Of those patients, 158 reported having an unusually large meal during the 26 hours before the attack.

Twenty-five patients had the meal in the two hours before the attack.

- REUTERS