A recent study showed that getting stuck in traffic and getting frustrated about it triples the chances of having a heart attack.

The study conducted by a German research team involved more than 1400 people who went through a heart attack and survived. The result of calling all those people and asking them questions related to their heart attacks were somewhat surprising: many of them had been caught in a traffic jam about one hour before having the heart attack.

The findings of the study, which were presented at the American Heart Association's 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease in Florida, are not that hard to believe if you think about the level of stress one goes through when stuck in traffic.

Researchers found out that the people most exposed to heart attacks caused by traffic jams are the unemployed women and the elderly males.

The study also linked the heart attacks to the exhaust and pollution fumes sucked in while trapped in traffic. And it doesn't matter whether you drive your own car, if you are in a bus or on a bicycle; getting stuck in traffic might cause you a heart attack if you already have heart problems.

In a previous study, the research team led by Annette Peters, PhD, and her colleagues at the Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Center, Munich, Germany, discovered that about 8% of all heart attacks have something to do with heavy traffic, mainly with the air pollution from car fumes and the high level of stress.