Heartbreak.
Maybe we've all experienced it at least once in our lives- from a death of a loved one or a pet or from that break up from our first love we thought would be "the one." That pain you felt from that heartbreak was definitely real and it wasn't just an emotional pain you felt. Yes, you've heard of it before, broken heart syndrome. Now, I'm not saying you had broken heart syndrome, but there are cases where it is serious. You might've even heard stories of patients dying of a broken heart.
Broken heart syndrome in medical terms is also known as takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TCM), apical ballooning syndrome or stress cardiomyopathy and has only been discovered less than 25 years ago. Only 10 years ago was this syndrome recognized by the American Heart Association as a type of acquired cardiomyopathy (Peters, 2015, pg. 351). This temporary heart condition occurs due to intense emotional stress or even by a physical illness. Postmenopausal females are also at risk of TCM. However, it is not for certain if there are any genetic predispositions that will account for TCM to occur, not.
What happens when this occurs is that temporarily, there is a systolic dysfunctional of localized segments of the left ventricle (Peters, 2015, pg. 351). The mechanism of how TCM occurs is still controversial and the symptoms are similar to acute coronary syndrome (ACS). Symptoms include chest pain, difficult breathing, loss of consciousness due to fall in blood pressure. Since symptoms are so similar to ACS and that of other conditions, it makes it hard to diagnose unless detected early in the patient.
It seems that the only way to take care of takotsubo cardiomyopathy is to have a better management of physical or emotional stress. There is still so much research to be done on TCM, but how are we supposed to better understand this syndrome when its so similar to other heart conditions?
Peters, M. N., George, P., & Irimpen, A. M. (2015). The broken heart syndrome: Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Trends in Cardiovascular Medicine, 25(4), 351-357. doi:10.1016/j.tcm.2014.11.005
I find this post very interesting as I recently encountered a patient that lost their husband of 60 plus years. This patient presented with chest pain, difficulty breathing, and said she felt "sick to her stomach" since the loss of her husband. This syndrome makes total sense in my mind, if you think about how horrible chronic stress is for our bodies. Chronic stress can cause heart disease, which is normally a result from high blood pressure damaging the vessels of the heart. Back to the broken heart syndrome,when a person experiences great emotional stress, the heart is the organ that has to regulate the blood pressure fluctuation when this happens. I did a little research and what I found is that there is actually a change in shape of the left ventricle and weakening of the muscle itself. Since there really is no treatment for this type of change in muscle, some doctors will prescribe aspirin to help with the pain and to reduce any coronary blockage. I think the most important thing for this type of heart disease is to educate and attempt to prevent emotion distress when people experience heart break in their lives.
ReplyDeleteThank you for this post it really hit home why cura personalis is so important. There are so many things in our world that can stress us out mentally, physically, or emotionally. It is crucial to be mindful of your well being because stress comes in so many ways and affects your body in too many negative ways. Yes, we learned stress is good for fight-or-flight and short term memory but we still put too much unnecessary stress on our bodies.
ReplyDeleteThe chronic stress can cause long term damage to many organs. As the article mentioned the heart can get stressed out and over worked to the point of not working properly any more. The kidneys will also be affected by that because of the increased pressure in the glomerulus. The pulmonary system could be affected by the increase pressure in the arteries ,capillaries, and veins where there is not a need for high pressure. Mentally it is not good for us to be chronically stressed out. We also all know once one of our organs get damaged there is a much higher risk the others will become damaged.
We learn so much about our bodies but as future health care providers I think it would be good to have a class or a speaker talk about stress and inform us how we can deal with our stresses and to be able to help teach our future patients how to deal with their stress. We all deal with stress differently but if we can help on another to relieve stress it will be beneficial for our physical bodies and cura personalis.