To die of a broken heart

[gela]

Is it possible to die of a broken heart?

Edit:

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

[Gods_Mercenary]

I've heard that a truly devastating emotional blow can cause death. certainly it does nothing for ones health.

[Darebirth]

I would imagine so. Human beings are capable of dying of extremity of many emotions such as happiness, depression, and especially anger. It is conceivable that one can die of the feeling one has when you lose a true love.

[SoylentGreen]

Is it possible to die of a broken heart?

Your either watching to many chick flicks or not enough.

It's possible to kill yourself for love or the lack thereof

[Chaossaber314]

I've been so depressed over the actions of a loved one I've not been able to eat and threw up for a few weeks straight. If someone was actually clinically depressed and this continued indefinitely, I can see how someone could die of it. Psychological pain can reach really incredible levels and is very difficult to effectively combat.

[gela]

Your either watching to many chick flicks or not enough.

It's possible to kill yourself for love or the lack thereof

If you kill yourself you are dying of a knife wound to the gut(for example); not of a broken heart.

I can understand the confusion, so I edited the OP.

[Jack]

I'm with Chaossaber314. I think extreme emotions can affect your physical body, even to the point of death. Hopefully someone or something would intervene and prevent that from happening.

[Anmon]

broken heart is just an expression for feeling bad, you get the feelings of hurt usually in your chest, to the right and slightly above where your heart is located, the hurt then travels swiftly down to your gut and then up to the front sides of your head, then front of your head, Chakra anyone?

this feeling of hurt traveling up and down your body is bound to make you feel physically bad if too much of it happens, leading to a depressed state of mind that by its existence cause you to not breath properly, go out and exercise daily, not eat right etc could lead to premature death, apposed to you being not depressed and enjoying life.

[Chaossaber314]

I hope you're not suggesting that it's really as easy as just all of the sudden "being not depressed."

[Maryjane]

Research and personal experience tells me you can Gela.


Study Suggests You Can Die of a Broken Heart (washingtonpost.com)

[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.

[Anmon]

I hope you're not suggesting that it's really as easy as just all of the sudden "being not depressed."

Yes, get over it, women do easily, so should men, go out and find another pretty bird, theres plenty of them around.