What happens to our body when we suffer heartbreak, according to science

As author Susan Sontag wrote in the book Reborn“Love hurts.”

“It's like giving yourself up to have your skin peeled off, knowing that at any moment the other person could get out of your skin.”

This was confirmed by writer and journalist Florence Williams, when, after a relationship that lasted three decades, which included marriage and two children, she found an email written by her partner since she was a teenager.

It was a love letter to another woman.

She had never felt sad before, but she quickly learned that “the cliches about heartbreak are not melodramatic at all.”

“I felt like my heart had been stolen, like I had lost a limb, and I was drowning in the ocean, in the middle of a terrifying forest. I felt in danger,” he wrote.

“I was really shocked at how deeply I felt this, not just emotionally but physically as well,” she told BBC's Inside Science programme.

“I felt very anxious. I suffered from insomnia. I lost about 20 pounds in a few days.”

Laboratory tests showed that “there was a problem with my intestinal bacteria, my glucose levels were very low, and my pancreas stopped working well. So, five or six months after the breakup, they diagnosed me with an autoimmune disease: type 1 diabetes.” .

I noticed that this is also a lack of love. As Williams is a science writer and journalist, this experience led her to search for answers.

“I had a lot of questions about why I felt this way.”

“I was very interested in investigating why my immune system was somehow listening to my social or emotional state, and how it was all related.”

Therefore, he devoted himself to talking – and even participating in experiments – with scientists.

One of the first things I discovered is that although there is a lot of research on how we fall in love, science has not devoted much time to the end of this story.

But there are several studies that are beginning to solve this puzzle.

One of the most interesting such experiments was led by Steve Cole, a professor of medicine, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine, in the USA, who has been researching social genomics for decades.

Genomics is an interdisciplinary field that studies the function, structure, evolution, mapping and editing of the DNA of the entire organism.

In 2007, Cole, in partnership with John Cacioppo, a professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at the University of Chicago, among others, identified a relationship between loneliness and the way genes are expressed in a small study, which has already been replicated in larger experiments. since then.

He told Williams that loneliness is one of the most toxic factors known.

Cole described heartbreak as “the hidden landmine of human existence,” because when it goes off it can be devastating to our physical and mental health, but it remains unrecognized.

In his research, Williams experimented on Cole by collecting samples of his blood.

“We measured certain cells in my immune system at different times after the divorce.”

“What he was looking for were markers of inflammation, because he had found over decades of research that they were increased in people who felt threatened, as well as in people who felt lonely,” Williams explains.

Cole made this discovery after analyzing why some gay men with HIV died much faster than others: he found that those who did not declare their sexuality, or who were highly sensitive to social rejection, were most at risk.

The stress made their immune T cells more vulnerable to attack by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, and the virus spread 10 times faster.

Cole's subsequent studies of lonely people also showed that they were more susceptible to viruses and produced more immune cells that generate inflammation.

“It seems that when we are abandoned, our bodies interpret it in the same way as if we were left alone on the savannah: it is the same process, again, deeply evolved.”

This is a reference to the savannas in which our early ancestors lived, where if hunter-gatherers were isolated, they had a greater chance of contracting an infectious disease than of being attacked by a predator.

Hence the evolutionary meaning of this immune response: the body increases its defenses to combat physical wounds, and reduces other defenses.

“It is a survival instinct, because when we feel that we are left alone, we interpret it as if we are about to be attacked. Therefore, we regulate certain genes.

This could explain why lonely people are at greater risk of developing dementia, cardiovascular disease and other chronic conditions. It is also estimated that they are 26% more likely to die at a younger age than their socially connected peers.

This may have contributed to Williams developing a form of autoimmune diabetes.

In addition to this fascinating insight into how we evolved to respond to this type of loss and abandonment, Williams discovered other ways in which our bodies respond to this specific type of pain.

One of the most interesting things, she says, is that when we fall in love, the parts of our brain that produce stress hormones become more active.

As if he was preparing from beginning to end.

Perhaps this is why if our partner leaves or disappears, pain motivates us to seek them out or feel intense gratitude when they return.

On the other hand, some researchers have looked at divorce and heartbreak by looking at the brains of people passing through scanners to study their brain waves.

One of the scientists Williams consulted was biological anthropologist Helen Fisher, who conducted some MRI studies in 2011 and found that active parts of the brain are associated with addiction and cravings.

Since then, other researchers have discovered through MRI studies that social pain from heartbreak is processed closer to the parts of the brain that deal with physical pain, which shows, Williams says, that social pain is taken more seriously in the brain and pain. Physical.

“I learned that there is a real type of heartbreak called Takotsubo cardiomyopathy,” she told the BBC, referring to physical pain.

“We know that people with this often go through some sort of deep emotional crisis and feel like they've had a heart attack.”

“They go to the emergency room, and you don't see the typical signs — like clogged arteries — you see swelling of the left ventricle, and that happens in the presence of large amounts of stress hormones.”

Williams discovered that there are many other physical consequences associated with heartbreak by talking to scientists and analyzing a number of studies, while trying many of the strategies he found.

But did she find it therapeutic and cathartic to explore what was happening to her body while she was feeling so much emotional pain?

“It was both disturbing and comforting in a way.”

“I didn't like to hear that people who divorce are more likely to develop chronic disease and die prematurely, but at the same time, it was comforting to know that this is the way the human body is supposed to work, and that many of us experience this way.”

When she began her research, Williams didn't know if she might be among the 15% who don't recover after a big breakup.

But now I'm in really good shape, he says.

“The wonderful thing is knowing that just as we are wired to feel emotional pain and heartbreak, we are also wired to heal.”

“What has really helped me is connecting with others, and one way to do that is to be vulnerable and honest about the suffering we are going through.”

For Williams, nature was a great balm because, according to her, the antidote to loneliness was not just connection with people, but with the world and beauty.

“And finally, the third part is finding some meaning in this traumatic experience: What can you learn from this, and better yet, can you find a way to help other people who are going through this?”

For this purpose I wrote the book Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey (“Broken Curaçao: A Personal and Scholarly Journey,” free translation), in which she describes the different paths her research took her.