For as long as we can remember, our beloved songs and stories have told how sadness and grief can lead to dying of broken hearts. Now scientists say they have discovered the powerful physical connections between our minds and our bodies that actually lead to such damage.
And the good news is that by understanding how our emotions cause our brains to physically interact with our bodies, scientists believe they can develop revolutionary new ways to treat serious conditions like chronic pain and cancer.
Doctors have long known that trauma can damage our hearts. In the worst case, the so-called broken heart syndrome or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, stressful events lead to a sudden weakening of the heart muscles, which can be fatal.
Sadness and loss can also cause harm that’s more damaging, if less immediately catastrophic, according to a new study by Swedish researchers who examined the health records of more than two million parents.
It found that those who had lost a child were more than twice as likely to develop atrial fibrillation — a condition in which the heart beats irregularly and significantly increases the risk of stroke — the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health reported in March.
Now scientists say they have discovered the powerful physical connections between our minds and our bodies that actually lead to such damage
dr Dang Wei, an epidemiologist who led the study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, told Good Health, “A broken heart breaks the heart.” heart attack, stroke and heart failure than those who didn’t.”
But how are emotions and hearts so closely related?
In Israel, Hedva Haykin, an immunology researcher at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, is studying the role of a brain region associated with positive emotions and motivation called the ventral tegmental area (VTA).
Their autopsy studies in mice show they suffer far fewer scars from heart attacks when their VTA was electronically stimulated — with “only small patches of damage,” the Nature journal reported in February.
She says that activating the VTA center for positive emotions in the brain appears to trigger immune changes that help reduce harmful scar tissue. Now she and her colleagues are researching how this happens to enable doctors to harness this positive mental power.
Meanwhile, other studies are uncovering important evidence that VTA plays a critical role in other serious conditions, particularly chronic pain.
In 2020, a study led by Professor Gerald Zamponi – a neurobiologist at the University of Calgary, Canada – showed that VTA stimulation alleviated the condition of mice with chronic pain.
It causes the VTA to transfer the powerful reward chemical dopamine to the pain-producing area of our brain (the medial prefrontal cortex), Professor Zamponi wrote in the journal Cell Reports.
In chronic pain, it is believed that this cortex can “get stuck” and cause intense pain sensations. But Professor Zamponi says his studies show that when the VTA sends dopamine to the cerebral cortex, its activity decreases and pain sensations subside.
He believes that positive motivation can also stimulate the VTA to transmit dopamine: “In humans, neural activity in the VTA is impaired under chronic pain conditions.” He suggests that encouraging people with chronic pain to increase their VTAs by increasing their positivity stimulate, relieve their symptoms.
Experts say a breakup can also cause temporary physical problems like hair loss or skin conditions like rosacea
That may sound oddly alternative. But it’s not dissimilar to what the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) suggests.
Two years ago, NICE decreed that drugs such as nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, benzodiazepines, or opioids should no longer be given as first-line treatment for chronic pain because “there is little to no evidence that they make a difference in pain.” To do damage’. Instead, two psychological approaches are recommended: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). Both aim to help patients replace negative thinking with a positive approach to their life and future.
Hedva Haykin says that while there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence that people who think positively think better at surviving illness, the ability to identify one pathway by which such an effect occurs — and to show that it’s experimentally based — works on lab animals — makes it look a lot more real.
Such study results are welcomed by Carmine Pariante, Professor of Biological Psychiatry at King’s College London. “All of these developments are exciting because we now understand the molecular pathways involved at the microscopic level,” he said.
He adds, “The idea that there is a communication between the brain and the immune system has been around for 50 years.” affects the mind” – and expect to be told that their physical problem is just “all in the mind”.
“The more we can emphasize that the brain and body communicate through biological mechanisms, the more we can show that it’s not about dismissing things as ‘all in the mind’ and we can treat patients more effectively by engaging with both of psychology as well as dealing with psychology.” Physiology of diseases.