How our emotions affect heart shape

How our emotions affect heart shape

Do you know that grief, fear, emotional experiences affect the change in the shape of the human heart? Do you think this is a metaphor or fiction? Not. Practicing cardiologist Sandeep Johar has been researching this issue for many years and conducting experiments. He claims that our emotions have a direct physical effect on our heart. 

For example, fear and grief can lead to serious heart injuries. Nerves that control unconscious processes, such as a heartbeat, can feel distress and cause a non-adaptive “hit or run” reaction, which causes a narrowing of blood vessels, a rapid heartbeat, and an increase in blood pressure.

Heartbreak syndrome

There is even a heart disease, first recognized about two decades ago, under the name “takotsubo cardiomyopathy” or “broken heart syndrome”, in which the heart weakens sharply in response to severe stress or grief, for example, after a romantic breakup or death of a loved one.

If you look at the heart with such a syndrome, its shape will be very similar to takotsubo - a Japanese pot with a wide base and a narrow neck. This syndrome goes away on its own within a few weeks, but in the acute stage it can lead to heart failure, life-threatening arrhythmias, and even death. There have been stories that this syndrome manifested in people due to the need to speak publicly, or because of a domestic quarrel, a loss in gambling and, even, a birthday surprise party.

Fell and died

In 1942, Harvard physiologist Walter Cannon published an article titled “Voodoo Death,” in which he described deaths from fright in people who thought they were cursed. In many cases, the hopeless victim fell dead dead in place. Common to these cases was the victim's absolute belief that there was an external force capable of causing their death, and against which they could not fight. This alleged lack of control, Cannon wrote, led to a strong physiological response in which the blood vessels contracted to such an extent that blood volume and pressure dropped sharply, the heart weakened, and serious organ damage occurred as a result of a lack of transported oxygen.

Cannon believed that voodoo deaths were limited to local aborigines. But over the years there have been many cases of similar deaths among people living in the civilized world.

Despite the fact that official medicine still considers the heart as a machine, perhaps in the near future, doctors will recognize the fact that when we talk about a “broken heart”, it is really broken and this condition can lead to serious physical health problems. up to death.