Get out your nitro, football season is just about to begin

Agita already developed among New York Jets fans over the injury to their quarterback and over the way Washington raided four of its regulars from last season.

Now it becomes truly unhealthy. All football fans are hereby put on notice that their once-a-week passion can be bad for their hearts.

The latest warning about stress and big games came out of Vienna over the weekend during a convention of the European Society of Cardiology. One expert noted that Swiss soccer fans had a sudden surge in heart attacks during last year's World Cup.

Since American football can be just as exciting as world-level soccer, stateside fans should also be careful about their health now that the NFL season is beginning. This word to the wise was delivered by Dr. Eugene Katz, of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois in Switzerland, during the convention. He and his colleagues said there was a 60 percent increase in the number of cardiac arrests occurring outside hospitals during last year's World Cup, compared with those in 2001.

Since Switzerland did not even qualify for the World Cup, one can only imagine how Swiss hearts would have reacted to an overtime game involving their national team.

NFL however, do not need national pride to reach their own high levels of anxiety. Loyalty to their team becomes inflamed during night games, like the one on Thursday, when fans have had time to ingest copious amounts of alcohol.

"I've certainly seen examples after heartbreaking losses, particularly among susceptible people," said Dr. James H. O'Keefe Jr., director of preventive cardiology at the Mid America Heart Institute, in Kansas City, Mo. He added, "You can reduce that by being in better shape."

Doctors that fans lay off alcohol, tobacco and coffee and eat light and healthy meals before games. Try telling that to an American football fan who is loaded up with a six-pack, chips and cheese.

For that matter, try telling that to American corporations that spend millions of dollars to induce Americans to load up on salt, sugar, alcohol and caffeine. Nobody ever got rich selling 30-second Super Bowl commercials for salads.

American have long connected sports anxiety and cardiac stress, said Dr. Morris Weiss of Louisville, Ky., a lanky former high school basketball player who answers to the nickname Moose.

"We've had some teams at Louisville that we called the Cardiac Cards, he said, referring to the university's nickname, the Cardinals.

"It starts with getting to your seat in the nosebleed section," Weiss added. "By the time you climb a few ramps, you're already out of breath. I tell my patients to arrive early, try to get a disability parking space, take their time, take their nitroglycerine.

"But sometimes they tell me, `Moose, I don't think Pitino's going to be able to beat U.K. this year, and my wife is telling me to stay home,'" he added.

"I tell them to chill out at home."

Total is impossible for fans tempted to turn on the television set.

In an article published in the British Medical Journal last year, five British researchers (Douglas Carroll, Shah Ebrahim, Kate Tilling, John Macleod and George Davey Smith) found a 25 percent increase in acute myocardial infarctions on the day of and the two days after England's loss to Argentina in a shootout during the World Cup in 1998.