Grief, Depression, Stress, Brain and the Heart

A mind-body association was depicted in the March 24, 2019 edition of The New York Times. The article was titled “It’s Not All in the Head” and highlighted a possible link between the heart and the mind in a study of the” Broken Heart Syndrome.” In a broken heart syndrome, individuals had different functioning brains and was referred to as the Takotsubo syndrome. Depression, grief and distress amounted to impaired functioning.

The Takotsubo syndrome is a condition that occurs after a stressor such as that experienced after the loss of a loved one. This condition mostly affects women, with a weakened heart, and the heart bulges occasionally. This condition can be fatal but often the heart adjusts over time. This is a condition in the brain and its control over how the nervous system handled a stressor. With distress, the sympathetic nervous system or” the fight or flight” of the hypothalamus is activated  ; the parasympathetic system calms things back down; and it’s up to the  limbic system to generate and mediate emotions. In other words, these three regions of the brain are responsible, when healthy {effective communication}, to allow the basic autonomic processes to function smoothly in a homeostatic state.

Swiss cardiologists recruited 15 volunteers that were affected with this Takotsubo syndrome along with another 39 unaffected individuals for the study. Functional MRI scans of each brain were employed. Their findings were that with the   healthy subjects, the parts of the brain associated with emotions and the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system lit up in unison.  However the communication system among those areas didn’t work as well with the Takotsubo individuals. This suggested that depression, grief and distress were harmful variables on the heart.

Questions not answered in this particular research included the following: 1. Did stress change the brains that led to the heart damage? 2. Where these brains instead predisposed to handle stress poorly? 3. Does the disturbed brain remake the heart?  In conclusion, “In any event, stress hormones when released might affect a cardiovascular response” per Professor Christian Templin.

This particular study was interesting but does not answer definitively cause-and-effect of depression and grief as an ongoing stressor within the brain with its impact on the heart. However, we do know that stress or a stressor depending upon the degree or duration length is a potent activator of inflammation; creates a number of ailments; can wear down the immune system; and is harmful during the aging process.  Further, early life stress, which has a long-term duration, appears to be one of the strongest predictors of a lifetime risk for depression. It has been estimated that early life stress explains 20 to 25% of all mood disorders. Moreover, death of a spouse had the highest negative value on the External Stress Index. It’s obvious, a broken heart, loss from death, breakup or separation, and depression are powerful emotionally based stressors and not at all associated with a healthy brain or person. Instead, it placed a negative demand or hardship on the body’s physiological and psychological characteristics. Once again, one can’t have productive and effective living without positive emotional or mental health.

Canadian born Hans Selye’s research in the 1930s, popularized the concept of stress. He conceptualized stress “As a state of the organism following failures of the normal homeostatic regulatory mechanisms of adaptation. Later on in the 1950s, humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow believed that man, although was not perfect, could find his true self emotionally. Emotional well-being was described by Maslow as “ B-love, as an end in itself so that enjoyment, admiration, delight,  contemplation and appreciation are its characteristics while at the same time the individuality of the lovers is preserved.” Earlier Freud summed it up when he said something to the effect “to be able to love and to work were ideals that corresponded to a healthy individual.”