[Maryjane]

To what extent does our emotions and mental condition affect our physical health and bodily functions?

Proceedings reports on research by a group of British scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London and the Brighton & Sussex Medical School. The team discovered that the "higher regions" of the brain, used for learning, memory and emotion, can destabilise the cardiac muscle of someone who already has heart disease; in times of stress, such as loss of a loved one, this can result in harmful rhythms in the heart. It has long been believed that there might be a link between emotional trauma and heart attacks, but it had been thought that more primitive regions such as the brain stem sent messages to heart tissue. In 2005, researchers at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine also claimed to have proven that one could die of a broken heart. They studied patients with unclogged arteries who had had heart attacks after emotional stress, such as the death of a spouse, and found the levels of stress hormones in their blood were up to three times higher than "conventional" heart-attack victims. Cases of "broken heart syndrome", where a spouse dies within a short time of their husband or wife, have been well-documented. Famous examples have included Dennis Potter, who died a week after his wife Margaret, Johnny Cash, who died less than four months after his wife June, and James Callaghan, who died 11 days after his wife Audrey.

The question: Can you die of a broken heart? | Society | The Guardian

Extreme grief can trigger atrial fibrillation. It's happened to many widowed people I know. It also happened to me. I know a few people that have committed suicide over the loss of their spouse.

We talked about this last night in chat. Take a walk in a cemetery and notice on the head stones how many senior couples die within a short time of each other.