“I can’t live without you”. What is that all about? It is just an exaggerated phrase that people in love say to each other? We may think so, after all, in most cases after someone leaves us or dies, we experience trauma, but we don’t literally die as the phrase suggests. However, there actually is a possibility that if someone you care about deeply dies, you might experience severe health problems of death as well.
I’ve known and older couple who had been together for about forty years. It wasn’t exactly a happy marriage, but they stayed together, until the husband suddenly died because of an animal attack. After he died, the wife, who didn’t have any relevant health problems became really sick. After a while she couldn’t even walk anymore and shortly after she died as well. Now, this is not the first time I’ve heard of something similar happening, so I wanted to know more about it.
I figured out that such occurence is called “the widowhood effect” and it means that the passing of one spouse increases the risk of the other ony dying as well. The National Institute of Health came to a conclusion that the risk of this happening is from 30% to 90% in the first three to six months. A meta analysis published in 2012 that consideres all published studies in this topic found that widowhood is associated with 22% higher risk of death compared to the married population.
Researchers still don’t know what exactly is the reason that causes widowhood effect , but most likely it’s the enourmous amount of stress and the drastic changes in lifestyle habits. Widowers are more likely to die by suicide, heart attack, cancer and even car accidents. The occurance shows just how much social relations influence our mental and psysical health.
There is also a thing called “a broken heart syndrom”. The feeling we reffer to as being “heartbroken” might literally lead to cardiac consequences. There is a connection between depression, mental health, stress and heart disease. It can happen even if your body is healthy. It usually occurs after a really traumatic, stressful event such as death or a breakup, but it can also happen when you experience a huge shock, not even necessarily a bad one. For example, from a shock of winning the lottery. It is not the same as a heart attack, even though there are some similarities. There are significant changes in rhythm and blood substances. However, the difference is that when you experience a broken heart syndrom, there is no evidence of blocked heart arteries. A part of your heart temporally enlarges and it doesn’t pump well, while the rest of your heart functions normally.
The good news is that while a broken heart syndrome can be fatal, most people who experience it quickly recover without any long lasting effects.
So if you ever go through something really traumatic, there are activities you should do in order to avoid such occurences. It’s good to meditate, exercise, talk to someone about your feelings, don’t let the negativity fill up inside of your mind. Maybe talk to a proffesional or someone you trust and if you don’t like talking about your problems to other people, write about them in a private journal. It is really important that you express yourself and let go of the pressure. Your mind has an enormous effect on your body and your health.
Veritas odium parit 