From American Scientist newsletter:
“A broken heart can actually break your heart, according to a new study out of Johns Hopkins University. Cardiologist Ilan Wittstein has shown that the overwhelming emotional stress that accompanies the end of a long relationship—due to death, divorce or breakup—can provoke a heart malfunction that is similar to a heart attack.
Wittstein was prompted to look for a link when he noticed a preponderance of women arriving in the emergency room who complained of shortness of breath and chest pains, which are signs of a heart attack. But X-rays of these women didn’t turn up the kind of arterial blockages that would accompany a heart attack, and blood tests did not reveal heightened levels of troponin, a protein the heart produces after cardiac arrest.
Other blood tests turned up a tantalizing clue, however: levels of stress hormones adrenaline and noradrenaline were as much as 34 times higher than normal levels. “You might call it ‘adrenaline poisoning,’” said Redford Williams of Duke University.
Ultrasounds showed that the women were indeed experiencing an abnormal heartbeat. After finding out that many of the women had recently lost a spouse, Wittstein called the new phenomenon “stress cardiomyopathy” and wrote up his study for the New England Journal of Medicine. Wittstein and colleagues will have to figure out why so many of the sufferers are older women. Some good news: “This is a temporary broken heart syndrome,” said Wittstein. All of the patients in his study recovered.”
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