The human heart is a marvelous organ. It filters blood and oxygen through the entire body and gives life in general to our existence. However, the human heart can be just as dangerous as it is useful. Doctors have documented some weird cases when the human heart causes trauma to the body that can kill us. Here are the three strangest ways the human heart can actually kill you.
A Literal Broken Heart
Grief is not a joking matter, and sometimes the pain that people feel from a broken heart can be so intense that people understand the real reason someone coined the phrase. In some cases, it feels like your heart is literally breaking. However, can this heartbreak actually kill you? Some scientists say yes.
A scientific study conducted at Rice University found that grief can cause inflammation in certain people suffering from the grief caused by the death of a closed loved one. The inflammation can be deadly. Another study showed that depression is associated with higher inflammation levels and that higher inflammation levels are often associated with just about every disease in older adulthood.
The study included older women who had lost their spouses and who had donated a blood sample to the study. The study compared those women who had higher levels of grief and analyzed the blood samples based on this. It turns out that those who had a harder time with the passing of their spouse had higher levels of inflammation in their blood. In short, those bereaved posed a higher likelihood to have inflammation.
Stress cardiomyopathy
Most people would agree that stress can be dramatically unhealthy. There are many studies shown that higher levels of stress that lead to higher blood pressure. However, these high levels of stress certainly can't kill a person, can they? The New England Journal of Medicine released a study in 2015 that documented a study concerning a very special sort of heart attack. Normal heart attacks are typically a result of consuming too much cholesterol, then plaque builds up, blocks the arteries and the heart ruptures. These heart attacks are a tad different.
Another type of heart attack has come to the attention of many doctors across the globe; stress cardiomyopathy is a type of heart attack commonly associated with high levels of stress. The study conducted in
The New England Journal of Medicine in 2015 studied about 1,750 people diagnosed with this heart attack. Alarmingly 90% of the participants were women over 67 but even more shocking was that the cause of these heart attacks was shock. They were also more prone to have a psychiatric disorder.
Aortic aneurysms
Possibly one of the most dramatic of heart afflictions is the dreaded aneurysm. Many have heard of it due to its ominous and "silent" way of killing its victims. An aneurysm is when the aerial wall of the heart balloons and weakens. Due to the ubiquitous nature of arteries, this can happen in literally any part of the body. Aortic aneurysms are even more frightening, and are commonly known as aortic dissections.
Aortic dissections occur when there is a rip in the aortic wall, blood leaks through and the wall begins to separate. Risk of pressure and rupture heighten when this happens. Given that these dissections cut off blood flow to vital organs, this is a life-threatening case.
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