Even healthy people are suffering from the serious medical phenomenon known as holiday heart syndrome.
During the winter holidays people tend to consume excessive amounts of food, alcohol, caffeine and salt which together can cause an abnormal heart rhythm - even in normally active healthy people, reported Fox News.
"It can be as simple as just a few skipped heart beats or extra heart beats to a more severe arrhythmia like atrial fibrillation," Dr. Paul Pagley, a cardiologist at Heart Hospital of Austin and Austin Heart, said to KVUE, an ABC affiliate.
Some symptoms of the disease include a rapid pulse rate, shortness of breath, chest pain, or swelling in the ankles or feet, reported Fox News. Heart attacks can occur in more severe cases.
"The heart's electrical system is very sensitive to a lot of outside influences," Pagley said to KVUE. "I think we see it ourselves. We get in a stressful situation, and we get anxious, and we get the epinephrine rush, and the heart speeds up. The same type of thing can be happening with the alcohol and all these other types of factors."
Heart attacks are they're most common around the holidays - mainly on Dec. 25, followed by Dec. 26 and Jan. 1.
"What makes it more worrisome is the length - how long it lasts," Pagley said to KVUE. "In other words, if you feel a rapid heartbeat - a speeding heartbeat or irregular heartbeat - for hours that's probably something you should have checked out."
