Craig Veltri
Forget the hazards of Black Friday, let's move on to winter hazards, shall we? Just in time for the season, a Kingston cardiologist has shown that shovelling snow really can be deadly.
Adrian Baranchuk, who also teaches medicine at Queen's University, had heard about the connection and knew it was common practice for cardiologists to tell heart patients not to shovel the white stuff.
But after the Argentinean transplant started seeing a spike in patients one winter, he tried to look up the scientific evidence to learn more - but there simply wasn't any, reports the Vancouver Sun.
So he pored over Kingston General's records for two winters, starting after the first snowfall each year and adding up the heart attacks. There were 500.
"Then he looked closer. Thirty-five of them, or seven per cent, had started when the patient was shovelling," reports the Sun.
The culprits include cold air, "the burst of start-and-stop effort" and "the fact that many people shovel without warming up their muscles first."
The risk for men is four times that of women and also four times greater if you have a family history.
Sounds like a perfect reason to delegate, but if you can't, there's plenty of advice out there on how to make clearing the walk a little safer.
The Toronto Emergency Medical Services web site urges people to talk to their doctor about shovelling in advance of the season, of course.
They also add a few more risk factors they say should make you think twice about getting out there: high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels, being a smoker and leading a sedentary lifestyle.
Toronto EMS also suggest waiting one to two hours after eating, avoiding caffeine and nicotine and drinking some water before you shovel.
"Warm up first (walk or march in place for several minutes before beginning)," they advise. And, "Start slow and continue at a slow pace (Suggestion: shovel for 5-7 minutes and rest 2-3 minutes)."
A tip that should be shared with healthy shovellers, too: Shovel early and often as new snow is lighter than heavily-packed, partially melted snow, they suggest.
Are you the snow removal expert in your household or do you do everything you can to outsource it? And, do you practise safe shovelling?