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Hearts Really Can Break

By Pat Racimora on February 14, 2010 at 3:00 PM in Current Affairs

Happy Valentine’s Day! OK, the illustration is a little different from what you see on the Hallmark card rack, but it seems right somehow because I want to share a fascinating story about hearts.

“Broken heart” is best understood as a metaphor for the loss of someone–including companion animals—very dear to us through death, rejection, breakup, betrayal, or even just moving away. But it turns out that hearts actually can break. An article published this week by Ron Winslow in the WSJ describing how otherwise perfectly healthy hearts can fail.

“…Broken-heart syndrome, a name given by doctors who observed that it seemed to especially affect patients who had recently lost a spouse or other family member. The mysterious malady mimics heart attacks, but appears to have little connection with coronary artery disease. Instead, it is typically triggered by acute emotion or physical trauma that releases a surge of adrenaline that overwhelms the heart. The effect is to freeze much of the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber, disrupting its ability to contract and effectively pump blood.”

Winslow offers examples emotional and physical stressors that can “break our hearts.” These include some associated with the metaphor, such as death of one’s spouse. But others are more prosaic, such as coming upon one’s dog caught in a raccoon trap, getting lost while driving in a strange and unsafe area, feeling intensely anxious about something such as an upcoming public speaking engagement, an adverse drug reaction, feeling overwhelmed, and anythng causing intense stress. In short, whatever would release a rush of adrenaline.
Fortunately, the news isn’t all bad.

“The syndrome is relatively uncommon, accounting for an estimated 1% to 2% of people–and about 6% of women–who are diagnosed with a heart attack…It can be fatal on occasion, but for the most part patients recover quickly, with no lasting damage to their hearts.”

It is still unclear as to why some people have such an extreme response to stress or loss while most people do not. Also, exactly how to prevent such attacks is unknown.

But, in the meantime, I think it is probably best to do whatever one can—realizing this is not always possible—to keep one’s stress in check and maybe that of your tense friends as well. In one case, an attack was caused by friends jumping out of a darkened room and shouting “Happy Birthday!”

h/t to Dr. Ken for sending me the story.

  • Rich

    :* Happy Valentine’s Day Pat. 

    That IS an interesting story.  I wonder if anyone who noticed they had just won the lottery then keeled over dead?

    I did have a friend who had a “coronary episode” during an eathquake.

  • don x

    If this were common, one would expect a lot of broken hearts in places like Haiti, in military combat situations, after 9/11, after a Tsunami, or when a person is “scared to death.”   Probably most of these traumatic heart reactions would be considered a heart attack.  Interesting distinction.

    Happy V Day!

  • Marvin

    Happy Valentine’s Day, Pat!

    I remember seeing a National Geographic-type documentary where an ape had died from a broken heart after it’s family member had died from unnatural causes. It broke my heart to see the ape had just remained in the same spot, next to its deceased relative.

    It makes sense deep emotion would affect us physically a well.

    Great article! :)

  • lark

    testing

  • oowawa

    Here is an article on Death from a Broken Heart.

  • Linda Anselmi

    A sad Valentine’s Day toon, but very interesting story Pat.

    Folklore has always said that people have died of broken hearts. So not such a stretch to believe strong emotions could precipitate a physical heart event. 

  • tango

    Well we’ve all heard about 2 people who’ve been married 50 years and one gets ill and passes away and the other spouse who has been in good health without any chronic or life threatening disease dies unexpectantly within a few weeks of the first person.  I’ve read of two couples like that in the past 6 months who died within days of each other.  To me, extreme grief and emotional pain was a contributing factor in their deaths.  Who really knows how the human body works so I can see a death like that causing some sort of reaction in the body to hasten death or an event like a heart attack.  

  • oowawa

    Indeed–and that does not include the many who kill themselves after suffering the loss of a loved one–which may also be considered a form of death from a broken heart.

  • Sassy

    tango, you are right.
    A couple that we had known for years died within three weeks of each other.
    Both were children of pastors, so I guess they were ready to reunite for eternity.

  • Solara 9

    The graphic is good–really looks like a very disrupted heart!

  • stodghie

    as usualy pat you art is great! recently my aunt died. my uncle who had looked after her as her health declined died a month later. broken heart? probably! i also thought he felt his job here was done.

  • Cathy in Ks.

    This wouldn’t exactly fit in the “broken heart category” but Christopher Reeves and his wife Dana come to mind.  He died first after being severely disabled for years and I believe his wife Dana was his primary caretaker.  Later Dana developed lung cancer (if my memory serves me correctly.  I also believe she was not a smoker) It seems that she passed away quickly after it was announced she had cancer of the lung.  I guess on one hand you could say this was “romantic” but the sad thing is that they left behind a son who is now without parents to raise him.

  • tango

    Yes, just like Alexander McQueen who was suffering over the death of his mother. How sad.

  • karen for Clinton

    There are also heart stings, so when we say something or someone tugs on our heart strings we are correct.  A little pull feeling when our emotions are piqued.  
    They are called chordae tendineae.   

  • Sassy

    Pat,
    Many physicians prescribe anti-depressants for spouses of failing patients when death is imminent.
    That may account for the low incidence of this syndrome.
    Emotions are powerful, both the good and the bad.

  • AbigailAdams

    I read about this a long time ago.  I think I suffered a broken heart when someone close to me suddenly died.  It’s hard to describe the sensation, especially if you have no other reason to be seriously ill.

  • Pat Racimora

    Yes, Cathy in Ks, I was thinking about that couple.  Yes, Dana was not a smoker.  And the boy is especialy sad, of course. but I know they had many good friends and I am sure he has been lovingly cared for.

  • Scranton4Hillary

    When I was a little girl we lived in a neighborhood near a very elderly Lebanese couple.  They woud walk around their yard holding hands inspecting their fruit trees.  They did not speak English and were in their late 80s when I first met them.  Neither one was very friendly but I enjoyed playing with their great-granddaughter.  They both lived into their 90s. The husband died unexpectedly one day.  For a few days after he was buried I would see her walking in their yard looking at the trees all by herslef.  She died 12 days later.  I know she died of a broken heart–too lonely to live anymore.

  • NorthwestIndependent

    I emailed this to several people I know, in hopes of trying to explain that it’s not always all that possible to just walk away from the end of a relationship as if it’s nothing and as if the whole world is yours again as a big opportunity, and that there are physical consequences sometimes.

    I do know what it’s like to lose people close to me.  I have one ancestor, an aged aunt, left in the world.  All the others are gone and I personally signed the death certificates for 3 of them as the person who was in the room at the time of their passing.  And definitely, two of them were quite a loss to me.

    Nothing compared, though, to the love of my life walking out on me one day, saying that he just wasn’t into it any more and had found someone new.  In shock from the sudden news, I fell to the ground, seeing stars and becoming briefly unconscious.  You’d think 15 years later I’d be over it, but nope.  I survive OK, and I still laugh a lot, but not a day goes by that I am not aware of what I once had, that I haven’t had since then and that the odds aren’t in favor of my having ever again.  I could easily see how someone would decide, “This totally isn’t worth it any more,” and lose their will to live.  I only didn’t myself because I figure I’ve still got a couple decades to find another one of those “One”s again and it was so wonderful the first time that I want to try for it again; had I been 85, the outcome could well have been different.

  • Pat Racimora

    NorthewestIndependt–Thanks for sharing your story.  I know a lot of poeple don’t understand losses as we all take them differently.  Keep looking though–you WILL find!

  • Pat Racimora

    Good article–Thanks oowawa for this.

  • susan

    Another cardiac condition that needs more research is Cardiac Syndrome X. It occurs primarily in post-menopausal women with high stress levels. The stress and other factors causes the microvessels, rather than the larger coronary arteries, to go into spasm and cut off oxygen supply to the heart. If you are told you may have this condition, please do not minimize it, as so many doctors do. I lost my beautiful 56 yr old sister the day after Xmas, and now I think I have “broken heart syndrome”.

  • Tricia

    Ohl, my–I wonder why more women don’t know about this.  Very scary and PM has a number of stresses going for it–worrying about adult children, has enough money been saved for retirement, friends begin to pass, the family dog dies, fading culturally-defined beauty, and on and on.