Cosmopolitan

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Heartbreak syndrome

It is rare among young women today to not have felt the pain of what society calls a broken heart. It literally feels like your heart has been hurt so badly that it breaks, although it always soundly extremely dramatic. Well no longer. Glamour.com reports that health experts now believe that true heartbreak can literally “break your heart.”

According to Glamour.com, The Wall Street Journal examined a condition called “broken heart syndrome” – a name given to an actual health condition brought on most often by the death of a loved one, or – it’s possible – an extremely traumatic break-up.

Ron Winslow from The Wall Street Journal explains that "the mysterious malady mimics heart attacks, but appears to have little connection with coronary artery disease.

"Instead, it is typically triggered by acute emotion or physical trauma that releases a surge of adrenaline that overwhelms the heart. The effect is to freeze much of the left ventricle, the heart's main pumping chamber, disrupting its ability to contract and effectively pump blood."

Astoundingly, cardiologist at Minneapolis Heart Institute, Scott Sharkey, describes it as “a concussion of the heart.

“It’s really a heart attack which is triggered by stress rather than a blocked artery,” he adds.

Tags: