“Broken Heart Syndrome” Is A Real Thing, Say Researchers

https://theheartysoul.com/broken-heart-syndrome-real-thing-say-researchers/?

"Can you die from a broken heart? Researchers and heart experts suggest that broken heart syndrome is a real thing. A broken heart can do more than just cause emotional distress – it can actually compromise your heart health and cause real heart problems. In fact, a broken heart brought on by an emotional stressor such as the death of a loved one or the discovery of a partner’s infidelity can affect your heart health in a plethora of ways and may even contribute to early death.

"Broken heart syndrome is also known as stress-induced cardiomyopathy or takotsubo cardiomyopathy and can occur in both healthy and unhealthy individuals. It is triggered by an emotional stressor and is often misdiagnosed as a heart attack.

"If left untreated, broken heart syndrome can result in short-term heart muscle failure, but if caught in time, it can be well treated without leaving permanent damage."

In a related story:

The Demoralizing Reality of Life Under Trump
Every day is the same, but still awful.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/demoralizing-reality-of-life...

As Ford further notes, the psychic costs of following and resisting all of this stupidity are not borne equally by all Americans: “A Gallup poll from April found that younger and less affluent Americans felt more daily stress in general. Women reported higher rates than men in the APS survey; black and Hispanic Americans also registered higher levels of anxiety about the future than their white counterparts.” And this stress, in turn, has marked health impacts, again borne unequally by communities with less power. Still, it’s not just that families are ripped apart in immigration raids and that Latina mothers suffer higher rates of miscarriages—everyone following along with the cruelty at home is suffering too. In the spring, Pew polled Americans asking them to describe how Trump’s comments and statements made them feel. The top seven responses, in descending order? They felt concerned (76 percent), confused (70 percent), embarrassed (69 percent), exhausted (67 percent), angry (65 percent), insulted (62 percent), and frightened (56 percent). In the Washington Post, William Wan and Lindsey Bever write that “Researchers have begun to identify correlations between Trump’s election and worsening cardiovascular health, sleep problems, anxiety and stress, especially among Latinos in the United States.” In other words, it’s not just that Trump is wasting our time and mental space; he’s also making us physically ill....

The actual psychic toll on our mental health is crippling. The lost sleep, the grinding anxiety, the escalating fears don’t just represent squandered time. They start to chip away at your health and at your soul. The healthy response would be to tune it out altogether, but since actual people are actually suffering the brutal consequences, we cannot. And so here we are back in the narcissist’s loop, fueling his need to be at the center because, well, there he is at the center.

I have been writing about Trump burnout for a while now, but I confess that this summer has been harder, both because the cruelty we once dreaded and feared is manifestly occurring all around us every day and because vast numbers of our friends and neighbors are either exulting in it or sidelining themselves as a result of what Vox, waaaay back in 2017 once dubbed “Trump fatigue syndrome,” a kind of fugue state involving numbness, burnout, and a corresponding loss of reality. This is then doubly concerning, because in addition to being jealous of these people’s newfound freedom, as Nesrine Malik writes, for the Guardian, the real jeopardy of authoritarianism starts with fatigue. Moral seriousness seems to require being aware enough of the chaos everywhere that you accept being punched in the mouth with it every day.