Monday mornings are hard. After a nice, peaceful, restful weekend, or even after a very exciting, activity-filled weekend, heading back to work is a drag. Even if you like your work, it can be quite stressful. But the stress is not just mental; it’s also stressful for your body. Your cardiovascular system is particularly vulnerable.
See, decades of research show a very clear “Monday effect,” with heart attacks and strokes rising on Monday mornings. There are more heart attack deaths on Monday than on any other day of the week. This has been shown globally with several studies backing up this information.
In this article, I’ll take a look at the evidence, explain why it happens, and give you some practical tips so you can protect your health on Monday mornings. With a little foresight, you can make your Monday morning much healthier, so you’re confident and ready to start your week in an upbeat, heart-healthy way.
The Evidence: A Clear, Consistent Monday Morning Spike
The data are clear and consistent. Heart attacks and strokes are most frequent at the beginning of the week, with Mondays showing the highest incidence. This pattern is consistent across different populations, among different ages and regions, indicating this is a pretty widespread phenomenon.
Heart Attack Risk Higher on Monday
For heart attacks, the Monday morning spike is especially clear for severe cases of STEMIs (that is, ST elevation myocardial infarctions), which need urgent care. A review of 28 studies found that heart attacks are 13 to 55% more common on Mondays than the weekly average, based on data from hundreds of thousands of patients.
Another review in the European Journal of Epidemiology found a 15% higher risk of dying from heart problems on Mondays, especially in men and younger adults. A 2016 Italian study over 40,000 heart-related deaths over a 13-year period found that Monday rates were about 13% higher than on Sundays and about 6% higher than the daily average.
Stroke Risk Rises on Monday Morning
The same kind of pattern is seen with strokes. The Framingham Heart Study, which has followed over 5,000 people since 1948, found that 17% of strokes happen on Mondays, and working men had a significantly higher risk of a stroke on Monday compared to men who did not work. A Finnish study of over 12,000 strokes found about a 29% increase in strokes from Sunday to Monday. Sundays were a bit lower than average, and Mondays were a bit higher, thus the large swing. They also observed that the increased risk of a stroke on Monday morning was only prevalent in people of lower socio-economic status, ie, the working class. A Japanese study using the Kyoto Stroke Registry with over 13,000 cases compared the risks of every weekday to Sunday. They found that strokes were only significantly higher than Sunday on Monday morning, about 19% higher. All the other days of the week were about the same. This was independent of age, gender, or high blood pressure.
Why Mondays? The Studies Gave Us Clues to Understand the Causes
So why is there a higher risk for heart attacks and strokes on Monday mornings? It seems to be from a mix of biological, behavioral, and environmental factors that come together in a perfect storm on Monday morning. The main reason appears to be getting out of rhythm with your biological clock over the weekend.
Heart rate and clotting factors naturally rise, called “the morning surge.” This peaks between 6 a.m. and noon, when strokes are most likely to occur. This is normal. But on Monday morning, this spike meets the sudden switch from weekend rest to work stress, which increases the strain on your arteries and the risk of plaque breaking loose and causing a stroke, causing a clot further downstream.
Weekend behavior probably plays a role, too. Things like drinking more alcohol on the weekend or sleeping at odd hours make it hard for your body to wake up and recover properly on Monday morning. Some people even skip their medications over the weekend because they feel fine.
I suspect, too, that when people don’t like their jobs very much, it makes it very hard to get up on Monday morning and go back to the office or the job site to do work they hate doing.
Basically, you’ve been out of sync with your body’s morning routine for a couple of days, and now you’re trying to get back into your work-week morning grind, which you may not enjoy so much. It can be rough.
Monday-Proof Your Heart: Lifestyle Changes to Slash the Risk
You probably can’t fix everything about Monday morning, but you can build a few simple habits that help you move more smoothly from the weekend back to the work week.
Sunday Night is a Work-Week Night: Like we tell our school-aged kids, Sunday night is a school night. Well, Sunday night is a work night for you, too. So endeavor to get a good night’s sleep, like seven to nine hours of time in bed on Sunday night, so that you are well rested on Monday morning. Don’t treat Sunday night like you did Friday and Saturday night.
Take Time to Ease into Monday Morning: Give yourself an extra 15 minutes on Monday mornings to practice deep breathing, gratitude journaling, and spending time with God in His Word. These habits can help you move peacefully into your morning routine and make your morning go much more smoothly.
Hydrate Wisely: Start your day with a glass of water first thing. That will help you hydrate your body so everything works better. It helps thin your blood and lower your blood pressure at the same time. Then don’t just grab coffee and a donut and head out the door. Get your BarleyMax drink, then have a protein-rich fruit smoothie with almonds and ground flaxseed. The fiber and the protein will stay with you all morning and fuel your day with antioxidants and steady energy. Stay away from the vending machines at work. Instead, bring snacks of fruits and veggie sticks to help you through those boring parts of your day.
Take a Walk: Start your Monday morning with a brisk walk outside for 20 or 30 minutes. Look at the sun as it rises to help set your body clock in sync with daylight. This is a great time to praise God, be grateful, and look forward to the good things that will happen in your life.
Know and Manage Your Numbers: If you already have risk factors for heart disease, don’t take the weekend off. Keep taking your medicines as needed. Keep up your health routine over the weekend. You may celebrate with one meal during the weekend, but stick to your routine to keep losing weight and take a load off your body.
Get out of the Rat Race: A long-term goal is to improve your socioeconomic status so that you don’t have to go to a nine-to-five job on Monday morning. Begin a side hustle now to grow your financial independence.
These aren’t big steps, but you shouldn’t try to tackle them all at once. Pick one that you think is most important to you and that you can already see yourself doing. Maybe it’s committing to a full night’s sleep on Sunday night. Perhaps it’s drinking water first thing in the morning. Maybe it’s taking a walk. I don’t know, but you do know. Pick one habit to install.
After you pick one change, write it down, then tell someone you’re going to make the change and stick to it.
I’m not sure you can make Monday your favorite day of the week, but you can certainly make it much more enjoyable. Pick some things that make it a special day of the week so that you look forward to something on Monday morning. By doing so, you can take the risk right out of Monday morning, and probably out of every other morning, too.
