There’s now data to back up the theory that stressful events like the loss of a loved one can change your heart’s physiology and contribute to atrial fibrillation, heart attacks, and stroke, among others. Researchers followed nearly 200,000 U.S. adults over five years and report that such instances were “high and unchanged” from 2016 to 2020, according to a research article in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
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Stress Can Change Your Heart’s Shape
The term “broken heart syndrome” was coined in 1990, when a Japanese researcher noticed that stress can cause parts of the heart to temporarily enlarge and affect the ability of the organ to pump blood.
Scientists suspect that the temporary ballooning is a reaction to a surge of stress hormones caused by a difficult emotional event. Although change tends to be short-term, it can still be fatal. It can be misdiagnosed as a heart attack, because even though the physical changes to the heart are different, the symptoms a patient experiences are similar.
Over the course of the study — one of the largest ever of its kind — the death rate from the syndrome held steady, at 6.5 percent. Although more women than men experienced the syndrome, it was twice as fatal in men, with 11.2 percent of cases proving fatal, compared to 5.5 percent in women.
Who Gets Broken Heart Syndrome
“The continued high death rate is alarming, suggesting that more research be done for better treatment and finding new therapeutic approaches to this condition,” M. Reza Movahed, a cardiologist at the University of Arizona’s Sarver Heart Center in Tucson and an author of the study, said in a press release.
Besides gender, age also appears to play a significant role in determining who gets affected by the syndrome. People older than 61 had the highest incident rates, but the data showed a substantial jump between the next two groups. Adults 46 to 60 were 2.6 to 3.25 times more likely to experience it compared to those who were 31 to 45 during the study.
The data showed a slight variation of incidence by race. Socioeconomic factors like household income and insurance status may also play a significant role.
Identifying Symptoms of the Syndrome
The study could raise awareness of the syndrome among both doctors and patients. For doctors, knowing that the symptoms resemble that of a heart attack can aide in diagnosis. If tests show that there are no physiological signs of a heart attack underway, they could still ensure the patient gets treated. Also knowing that the syndrome impacts many people under 60 could help diagnosis.
For patients, recognizing that stress can cause these symptoms could help guide them to ways that could alleviate it. And recognizing that the symptoms are very much real, rather in their heads, could also prompt them to seek treatment.
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
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Article Sources
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Before joining Discover Magazine, Paul Smaglik spent over 20 years as a science journalist, specializing in U.S. life science policy and global scientific career issues. He began his career in newspapers, but switched to scientific magazines. His work has appeared in publications including Science News, Science, Nature, and Scientific American.
