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Hearts Actually Can Break
DesScorp writes "It seems that there's a grain of truth to one old wives' tale; it turns out that you really can die of a broken heart, especially if you're a post-menopausal woman. The Wall Street Journal reports on a phenomena called 'broken-heart syndrome,' which often occurs after great emotional distress. Quoting: 'In a conventional heart attack, an obstructed artery starves the heart muscle of oxygenated blood, quickly resulting in the death of tissue and potentially permanently compromising heart function. In contrast, the heart muscle in broken-heart-syndrome patients is stunned in the adrenaline surge and appears to go into hibernation. Little tissue is lost.' In the article a doctor notes, 'The cells are alive, but mechanically or electrically disabled.' Documented cases track heart attacks in people with seemingly healthy hearts after the grief of the death of a loved one. Intense feelings can cause the heart actually to change shape. Doctors call this 'tako-tsubo,' after the Japanese phrase for 'octopus trap,' so called because the syndrome was first identified by a Japanese doctor who noticed the strange shape in the left ventricle. Doctors note that while strong emotions like grief are usually associated with the syndrome, stress or a migraine can also trigger such heart attacks."
Hmm... According to this 2005 article, Dr. Ilan Wittstein came to the same conclusion after conducting a study:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_11_107/ai_n13452973/
Some might have conducted similar studies prior to his.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Leave it to the Japanese to somehow work tentacles into the ailment!
:)
Liquid N2 can also break your heart. Shatter it actually
Try being married for 27 years to a serial adulteress. That's REAL pain.
A man can hit me, punch me, kick me, stab me, cut me, shoot me, but only a woman can hurt me.
Free Martian Whores!
Perhaps you shouldn't make it 28? Life is too short to deal with someone who is terrible to you. It is a hard road to go down, but my life would have been hell without it and now I'm happier than I ever thought I could have been. Broken hearts heal.
> Try being married for 27 years to a serial adulteress
Can you please tell me where your house is located ? ;-))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I am a doctor.
The problem is recognizing that there actually is a problem. So many patients come in complaining of chest pain. However medicine is never about what the patient "says" is the problem (subjective data) but rather what we can objectively observe to be the problem. That's because medicine is about science, not speculation. The clinical history orients us to a range of possibilities (chest pain can be anything from muscular to pulmonary to digestive to cardiac/great vessel to neurological problems). We then ask further questions and perform tests to exclude/include certain conditions.
Because chest pain is so vague and also so common, we rely on EKGs and cardiac enzyme tests to confirm a diagnosis. Now there's a whole argument that the consequences of a heart attack are so severe that if there is doubt, we will treat it as a heart attack solely on strong clinical findings even when tests are inconclusive. However what usually happens is that the clinical history (heart disease in the family, patient age, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, obesity, smoking, previous heart attacks) doesn't point to a heart attack, nor is the type of pain consistent with angina, and therefore the pain is "written off" as Treitze syndrome, either correctly or incorrectly. The patient is sent home. And usually NOTHING HAPPENS. It's very rare that patients are sent home to die of a heart attack.
However a study like this (provided it receives more supporting studies) opens up a few more possible diagnoses. However I would argue that the actual "mortality" (how many people die) or "morbidity" (how many people are permanently damaged) of this "broken heart" syndrome is very very low. So now do we treat anyone with chest pain as a heart attack "for the benefit of the doubt"? How much will this cost both the patient and the tax-payer in public health systems? Hell, if we're going to treat everyone, we don't even need doctors anymore, right?
No - medicine is still about evaluating a patient and the risks and benefits of treating versus telling them "take 2 tylenol and call back in the morning". As far as I am concerned this type of information changes nothing as there is no significant evidence that people actually die this way. While this so called "broken heart" syndrome can degenerate into dysrhythmias and/or plaque rupture and heart attacks, well, we already know about those.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
"You are so beautiful, if you don't talk to me I could die of stress-induced cardiomyopathy"
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.