Physiology of Heartbreak

being heartbroken on valentine’s season gave me the opportunity to surf the net on that very same topic. i came across a very interesting article about love and being heartbroken.  read on and i hope you enjoy reading this as much as i did

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Lately, science has been making serious inroads into the messy business of love, unlocking some of its deepest secrets and unwittingly proving much of the top-40 wisdom to be true.

For example, one recent study showed that love really is blind: Researchers found decreased brain activity in the area associated with making critical judgments. Another study found that love really can make you crazy: People in love were found to have similar serotonin levels to people diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. Meanwhile, another researcher was working on a device to treat chronic pain when he inserted an electrode into a woman’s back, which sent a rush of pleasure to her, uh, nether regions. It was her best doctor’s appointment ever, and her doctor is now developing an “orgasmatron” to “treat” patients.

Here in Madison, as Valentine’s Day nears, one local scientist’s thoughts run down similar tracks. Richard Moss normally studies genetic abnormalities that lead to heart failure, but around this time each year, his thoughts turn to love and the physiology of heartbreak.

“When people are falling in love,” Moss says, “their brain chemistry is out of balance. And the rest of their chemistry is, too. You have responses when people fall in love, or when you see someone who is very attractive, their heart vibrates a little. These are the same responses you get when you exercise. You have an elevated heart rate and you sweat … Your adrenal glands squirt adrenaline all over the place.”

This is all fine — an inevitable risk in the affairs of the heart. As long as your feelings are eventually reciprocated, there shouldn’t be any long-term effects. In fact, Moss points out that men in long-term relationships tend to live longer than those who are single. Perhaps not surprisingly, there is no similar benefit to women.

But in either case, Moss says, being rejected can exact a toll in more ways than one, since the human heart has a finite number of heartbeats, on average about 2.8 billion.

“If you fall in love, your heart rate goes up,” says Moss. “And what you’re really doing is using up your 2.8 billion heartbeats. So the bottom line is that if your love is unrequited, you’re going to continue to use your heartbeats at a high rate, and you’ll expire early.”

But science also points us toward a remedy to the problem it has unveiled. A growing body of research has pointed to the beneficial effect of antioxidants on the heart. Luckily, antioxidants can be found in some pleasant places, like green tea, red wine, and chocolate, the last of which may be the most appropriate for this month. “Chocolate is a wonderful substance in and of itself,” says Moss, “because it’s an antioxidant. And it’s found in greatest abundance in dark chocolate. If you’re going to eat chocolate, there’s penalty there — calories, a little bit of fat. But if you’re going to get the antioxidant effect, you should go for the high-test chocolate — dark chocolate.”

Not only that, but it has other benefits for the lovelorn. “The sensation you get with the consumption of chocolate includes many of the same symptoms you feel when you fall in love,” says Moss. “Your heart rate rises, your palms get sweaty, you feel a little confused, perhaps, if you eat too much chocolate. So I tell [my students] that whenever they need the sensation that a piece of chocolate really does the trick.”

So buy yourself a box, crack open a bottle of wine, make an appointment for your, er, back pain. It may be your best Valentine’s Day ever.

Frank Bures is a contributing writer to Madison Magazine.

 

Madison Magazine - February 2005