How do you die of a broken heart?

Question

It must hurt. But how does it happen? What's happenning in your body?

I remember one of my history teachers telling us how during wars women would actually die of broken hearts when their soldiers wouldn't come home.

Answer 1

If it stops pumping blood...well your heart is broke and you probably won't live long.

Answer 2

It happens quite frequently, especially in couples who have been married for longer periods of time, experience some grand trauma, or are codependent upon one another. Of the three, I see the first most commonly.

When couples spend forty or fifty years together, their lives become intertwined -- enmeshed, in a sense -- they are one another. When one party dies (or, fails to come home after a war) a grand depression often sets in.

Because of this depression, people sometimes lose the will to live -- they don't necessarily WANT to die -- they just don't feel like eating anything right now (and sometimes not eating anything substantial for months), or don't feel like drinking as much as what they should -- chemicals in the brain alter in different amounts, and the way these people feel emotionally can sometimes become how they feel physically.

The bodies (maybe not necessarily the person, but the body) loses the will to be -- sometimes, the depression is so severe, messages of hunger, thirst, need to urinate or defecate . . . aren't sent -- and the lack of these functions causes death.

I have a patient right now who was married for sixty-some years. About a month ago, his wife passed away. That patient is hardly eating, hardly drinking, and is horribly constipated -- he's dying of a broken heart -- because the one person who he always thought would be there is gone.

When my ex and I separated (I was very . . . emotionally dependent upon him) I was unable to eat anything substantial for about two months -- not because I didn't want to -- but, I just couldn't.

Answer 3

I believe in it. My grandmother was in the hospital for a couple of months and was getting better. Unfortunately, my grandfather committed suicide while she was in there. We told her that he had passed away but not how. The next day she was still doing better, actually took her first step in months. A week later, she went from doing well and talking to going into a coma and passing away. We think she died of a broken heart, they had been married for 40 years. Also, you see it in pets too. We had 3 German Shepards, all related to eachother, and once one passed away, each passed away within months of one another. As they say "once one goes...the other isn't too far behind." Its such a deep depression that you don't have the will to live anymore.

Answer 4

Well I guess if your heart is broken you lose your will to live, and that means to stop eating you stop doing anything but lay around and sink into a deep depression, you feel like you have nothing to live for, you give up, and I guess that is how you die finally from a broken heart.

Answer 5

It's called failure to thrive. They just give up on life. Fall into deep depression and don't care if they eat or drink.

Answer 6

It really feels like sometimes, But no you will get over it

Answer 7

If you think about it nothing....its a myth....a wise tale......propaganda.......you give someone an inch and they take a mile.....Its about time spent and time lost .....depression?