I’ve long known that there seems to be an increased risk of heart attacks in the winter, particularly when people are shovelling snow, however, I didn’t know exactly why this seemed to be the case. There are many risk factors of having a heart attack that are independent of the colder weather and snow, such as diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obesity, but—especially if you have one of these conditions—why is winter so risky for your heart? The Stats For every 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit the temperature drops, a person’s risk of heaving a heart attack rose 2%—this was in a study of over 84,000 heart attack patients [1]—a pretty significant cluster of people! As well, the rate of heart attack was