First off, do hearts really get broken? Let’s say you binge-watch all the rom-coms with bittersweet endings like The Notebook, City of Angels, A Walk to Remember, or put on replay all those viral Jollibee Valentine commercials, or make dibdib all the hugot lines in the world, will you be at risk for developing heart failure or heart disease in general?
The heart is truly a wonderful thing. This is coming from someone who has spent six years studying how the body works and how the heart plays a role in the middle all of the organized chaos that is the human body. It is amazing how paper-thin valves prevent liters of blood from flowing back into the chambers and how strong it pumps the entire blood volume throughout the whole circulation. We have come up with a fundamental understanding of how the heart works but it has left us with so many unanswered questions as well.
Hearts break down for so many reasons, like the acute obstruction of a coronary artery resulting in a massive heart attack, or abnormal electrical activity resulting in cardiac standstill, or infections causing the stiffening of multiple heart valves. All of these result in pain, difficulty in breathing, sudden death, among others. But can extreme emotional stress actually break your heart?
Yes, a real-life broken heart can lead to cardiac consequences. The links between depression, mental health, extreme emotional upheaval and heart diseases are well described in scientific circles. Stress cardiomyopathy involves severe but short-term heart muscle failure.
First described by Japanese researchers in 1990, this condition is also known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy mainly because the affected heart looks all balloon-like resembling the octopus takotsubo pots or traps used in Japan.
The symptoms are chest pain and heaviness, difficulty in breathing whether walking on level ground or walking up a flight of stairs or lying down flat on the bed. There could be fluctuations in blood pressure and heart rhythm with evidence of excess fluid (edema in the tissues and legs, or effusion and fluid in the lungs).
Most cases (approximately 90 percent) involve women, especially those with issues with mental health. Its exact cause and explanation still eludes us but the widely accepted theory is that extreme emotions and stress involve a barrage of hormones too much for the heart to handle.
Now before all you broken-hearted people converge at your nearest hospital to get your medical certificates signed for your Valentine’s Day absences, consider that stress-induced cardiomyopathy is as near a last-resort diagnosis as there is any in the world.
You would have to undergo a battery of tests — echocardiograms, and perhaps, coronary angiograms to rule out any organic heart disease. You would have to get blood extractions to exact any cardiac muscle injury or any other pathology that can cause your symptoms.
Treatment would involve medications for heart failure as well as lifestyle and dietary changes along with enhancing mental health and coping with the inciting event.
The good news — this broken-heart syndrome is treatable and people who experience it make a full recovery within weeks and though there is a chance that it can happen again and some fatal, these cases are rare. So if you do have serious symptoms, do see your doctor.
“A broken heart in real life is not half as dreadful as it is in books. It is a good deal like a bad tooth. It gives you spells of aching and a sleepless night now and then, but between those times, it lets you enjoy life and dreams and echoes and peanut candy as if there were nothing the matter with it.” L.M. Montgomery.
More often than not, we think of heartbreak as that cartoon of a heart shape with a broken jagged line running through it. Science tells us that feelings are more “felt” with the limbic system than our actual hearts but shows us evidence that indeed, extreme sadness and grief “breaks” our hearts as well.
It also tells us that it is going to be okay, that time will heal “broken hearts” (recovery after a few weeks) and with a little help (treatment, medicines) and some perspective (support, family, friends), those jagged edges will heal and become whole again.
This is presumably after the requisite videoke nights with your BFF’s rambling out Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn or Aegis’ best selections, trips to exotic locations, pints of caramel fudge ice cream and lots and lots of chocolate.
So where do broken hearts go? How should I know?
But live your life, it is going to be alright. Everything else is just gravy.
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Dr. Brian Calinawagan is a Board-certified cardiologist practicing at the SU Medical Center and at Holy Child Hospital. He currently holds clinic at the Lab & Care Health Clinic along the North Road, Dumaguete City.
Author’s email: brianjcmd@hotmail.com
