World Cup May Be Dangerous To Your Health

In advance of this year's World Cup, health experts are issuing a warning. The event may be dangerous to Europeans' health and not just from the usual soccer hooliganism and riots...

Health experts are warning that some games in the World Cup finals could be quite literally heart-stopping.

Cardiac arrests, wife-beating, binge boozing, smoking, even suicide - all of these phenomena surge during the world's most-watched sporting contest.

In the 1998 World Cup, the number of heart attacks in Britain rose by 25% when England lost to Argentina in a penalty shootout. According to a study in the British Medical Journal - compared with admissions for the same day in previous years - 55 more people were treated for a heart stoppage.

It even goes as far to suggest it might be advisable "on public health grounds" to scrap shootouts altogether.

Another study, carried out in the Netherlands, found there were an extra 14 male deaths, an increase of 50%, on the day when the Dutch team were knocked out of the European championships by France in 1996.