Bloggers and Heart Attacks

Can the stress of blogging cause a heart attack? It is doubtful but one finds it difficult to ignore the fact that not one but two well-known and well-liked tech bloggers had a heart attack in recent weeks.

Marck Orchant (50) never regained consciousness after his massive MI on December 2. The 41-year-old Om Malik of GigaOM was far more lucky and is expected to make a full recovery after his heart attack on December 28, 2007 according to his own announcement in a blog post (where else?). According to NYTimes, " the chief operating officer for Mr. Malik’s company, Giga Omni Media, played down stress as a factor in Mr. Malik’s health. He noted Mr. Malik’s incessant smoking of cigars and cigarettes was a more likely cause."

Om has decided to change his lifestyle significantly and it looks like we will enjoy many more episodes of the show in the future:

"Now living a healthier life isn’t just one of my New Year’s resolutions, it’s doctor’s orders. Friends and family have purged my apartment of smokes, scotch and all my favorite fatty foods — I am even going to be drinking decaf. I won’t be refashioning my avatar’s stogie with a celery stick, but I will be taking better care of my health."

Om Malik is currently doing well: "Making such drastic changes wasn’t easy, but they offered me the best chance of staying alive — and 50 pounds and 12 months later, have clearly worked."

Related reading

Some Brand-Name Bloggers Say Stress of Posting Is a Hazard to Their Health. NYTimes.
Popular tech blogger Mark Orchant died of heart attack at 50
A Heart-to-Heart with GigaOM Readers. GigaOM, 01/2008.
AltaVista Founder Dies of a Heart Attack at 42
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop. NYTimes, 04/2008.
Introducing Om 2.0: The Avatar. GigaOM, 06/2008.
What I Learned This Year. Om Malik, 12/2008.
Video: Scobleizer talks with Om Malik about stress and changes he's made to his life. Kyte.tv.
Image source: Gray's Anatomy, 1918, public domain.
Dangers of unrecognized heart disease: Husband dies while giving wife CPR (both found dead, age 60, 59) http://goo.gl/LZ39U
NYC blogger dies of heart attack http://goo.gl/GLHWC
Is blogging bad for your health? Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart, 43, dies "unexpectedly from natural causes". Wikipedia, 2012.

Comments from Twitter

@doctorwes: Uh, oh> RT @DrVes: Bloggers and Heart Attacks http://goo.gl/WlVkR

@scanman: This obviously applies to prolific posters.

@gruntdoc: This is why I'm not prolific...