How to mend a broken heart

The episode examines how intense emotions—grief, fear, resentment, and despair—can directly affect physical health and daily functioning, then explores concrete approaches to recognizing and working through different forms of heartache.

Physical effects of strong emotion

Cardiologist Sandeep Jauhar describes takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or broken-heart syndrome, in which extreme stress or grief causes the heart muscle to weaken and change shape without coronary blockages. One patient developed clear signs of heart failure after her husband’s death; imaging showed the heart had ballooned at the apex while the base constricted. Jauhar traces his interest in the topic to his grandfather’s sudden death from fright after a snake bite, an event that illustrated how fear alone can trigger fatal cardiac responses. He notes that medical training historically gave little attention to psychosocial stress as a modifiable risk factor, partly because it resists simple pharmaceutical fixes. Allowing patients to describe emotional sources of distress, he argues, can surface root contributors to heart symptoms that medication alone does not resolve.