Love is a phenomenon feeling and one aspect that one must cherish and experience once in their lifetime. It makes the black and white world full of vivid colors and breathes life into the lifeless. However, it comes with a devastating and tremendous risk of having to lose that love, heartbreaks can render once a joyful life into a nightmare, bleak reality followed by such crushing events often leads people to substance abuse, slip into depression, and even cause activities that can be detrimental to themselves. Every now and then we come across this idea that if it can cause such dire effects can an individual die from it, is it even possible?
The effects of a heartbreak
If you have seen someone with a broken heart or have experienced it yourself, then you are familiar with the unending misery, grief, and pain that it causes. Initially, the symptoms are only felt emotionally by the individual, however, slowly but surely they turn physical as well. Deteriorating mental health is a sign that represents that a person has suffered a trauma and is struggling tremendously. Though these are not always the same, it is important to identify what are the healthy and unhealthy symptoms of it.
Healthy Symptoms:
- Anger is a fairly common and natural response of our minds after such an event. Not only is it natural it also helps exhaust the negative energy resulting in a calmer mind.
- Crying. It may sound like a negative symptom, however, crying is completely normal, and just like anger, it helps the person get back on track quicker.
- Loss of interest in activities is another usual effect that one can experience after a breakup, losing a loved one, or along these lines.
A man feeling sad and frustrated.
These are surely normal, though these don’t happen on a daily basis, these only occur after a serious event, but on the positive side, these symptoms slowly start to fade away after some time.
Unhealthy Symptoms:
- Feeling a sense of being lost even after many weeks after such an event. Having this throughout the entire day is a bad sign and one must talk and express this concern with others.
- Unnecessary movement of hand and leg while engaged in other tasks trying to divert your mind from thinking in a certain way, though it helps in a way, it causes more problems in the longer run.
- Slurring or having a significantly lower speech even while having a normal conversation.
- Self-loathing or having the feeling of unworthiness is another negative symptom. Feeling sad is one thing, blaming and losing a sense of self-respect is a completely different aspect.
- Being suicidal and thinking about death is the final straw, if one is having these thoughts they must immediately go see a psychologist and arrange therapy.
A noose representing death.
These are the symptoms that are not common and shouldn’t last for more than a day or even occur even after experiencing an emotional event.
Taktsubo Cardiomyopathy
Taktsubo Cardiomyopathy or heartbreak syndrome is a clinical condition in which the body due to immense stress and negative thought process imitates symptoms of a heart attack. Though it is an imitation occurring by our body, one can experience shortness of breath accompanied by pain in the chest and sweating which can lead to the weakening of the heart muscles. According to experts if a person was having a stressful life prior to a traumatic event it can lead to fatal conditions and in very rare cases even death.
Heart’s left ventricle appearing like a Japanese vase, Tako-Tsubo.
Whenever we are under stress, our body responds with hormones such as adrenaline and noradrenaline which are supposed to help us fight against the stress. However, our heart is not designed to handle extreme amounts of these hormones and once they are secreted in excess it can cause narrowing of the small arteries hindering the flow of blood temporarily leading to fatal conditions. Alternatively, adrenaline may bind directly to the heart cells causing large amounts of calcium to enter the cell, this results in the irregular beating of the heart. Either the case, the heart usually recovers from these after a couple of days, but in very rare cases, it can lead to death as well. Unlike the heart attack that occurs due to the clogging of the coronary arteries or blood clots in it, the heartbreak syndrome patients are seen to be having healthy coronary arteries or very minor changes to them that can occur from various other factors as well.
So can you die from a broken heart? Yes, you can but it’s very unlikely. People who died after such events were mostly drowned in substances or were suicidal. Nonetheless, having to experience heartbreaks is truly a traumatic event that one must never face.
