Stuff You Should Know - SYSK Selects: Can you die of a broken heart?

Episode Date: April 9, 2017

In this week's SYSK Select episode, in the early 1990s, Japanese researchers found a strange anomaly in their study subjects, five people who had inexplicable heart attacks. From this first investigation has come a scientific mystery: Is it possible that the sudden loss of a loved one can be so difficult to bear that it can actually cause a heart attack and maybe kill you? Could the romantics be right? Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, this is Josh, and I picked this episode of S-Y-S-K Selects just because I thought it was a sweet one. And maybe a lot of you haven't listened to it yet. It was based on an article written by our former colleague, Kristen Conger,

lately of Stuff Mom Never Told You, and it has it all. It has quaint Japanese medical terms, suicide packs among long married couples, and a listener mail about Australian national hero, Ned Kelly. Plus the whole idea of dying from a broken heart is just lousy with sweetness. So, I hope you enjoy it. If you've heard it before, I hope you enjoy it again.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. And this is Stuff You Should Know, the podcast. That's right. It's Throwback Wednesdays. It is.

I did the cheeks today. Oh, yeah, you did. The first time in a long time. Yeah, but that was for a take that was abandoned within 10 seconds. Yeah, so it doesn't count. Yeah, a rare, aborted first take. That just doesn't happen.

No, but you want to tell them why? My brain had some sort of weird frizzle, I guess, is the only way to put it. I was trying to do the intro, and we're doing this episode, Can You Dive a Broken Heart? And I realized that Chuck had just been singing where do broken hearts go, and I put two and two together as I was trying to do the intro and screwed it up so bad.

But I sung it like five minutes ago, so it's a little weird. It hit you that late. Like, why is Chuck singing Whitney Houston? Is that Whitney? I think so. I think it is. Okay, if not, we'll find out soon enough.

Chuck. Yes. I've got a sad story for you. Sad, sweet, bittersweet. I knew it complete. What is that? The band? Billy Joel.

Okay. That's piano, man. Come on. Sad and sweet. I knew it complete. I knew it complete. I knew it complete. I knew it complete.

I knew it complete. Sad and sweet, I knew it complete. Oh, I never realized what he was saying was I knew it complete. Yeah. Okay. All right. I want to tell you about Dr. Daniel and Kitty Goot of Milwaukee, either Goot or Gootie, G-U-T-E.

Okay. Back in 2010, their daughter, I believe, came over and found her parents who were in their 80s in their garage with a bunch of helium tanks around them, tubes coming from the helium tanks going to plastic bags that the Goots had over their head, and they were dead. Helium tanks, huh? Helium instead of just a car. Yeah. Interesting.

They had taken their own lives. Dr. Goot was actually in really good health, but his wife had something called polymyalgia rheumatica, P-H-R, and she was suffering from dementia. The two had been together for 53 years, and they decided that they were going to end their lives together. They were spouses that they didn't want to be apart, one didn't want to live on without the other. They thought they were close enough to the end, I guess.

Yeah. Well, she was, and he was in good health, but he didn't want to live without her, apparently, so they took their lives together. Apparently this is articles from 2010, and I don't want to call it a trend, but it's something that's become more prevalent in recent years, especially among the elderly. The suicide aspect of it? Yeah. Basically, what you would call a suicide pact among elderly people who have been together

for a long time, where one is dying or one's health is taking a real turn, and they decide to go together rather than one try to live on without the other. That's an example of understanding exactly how a couple died together. Sure. There's another, more mysterious way that couples die virtually together, and it got a lot of press last year, and it's something called Broken Heart Syndrome. There's this idea, this very romantic idea, that if you really love somebody and they die, you're going to die of a Broken Heart eventually afterwards.

It's possible. Yeah. Biologically, medically speaking, it makes almost no sense whatsoever, but there actually has been some, it's very new, this idea, but there is some medical evidence to back up the idea that that might be real. Yeah, and we say Broken Heart in a figurative sense because we know that the heart is the organ that pumps blood, so it has nothing to do with love, but your brain has a lot to do with love.

But... And the brain is tied to the whole rest of the body. Yes. And the heart, which the brain suffering from a Broken Heart in the figurative sense can injure the heart in a literal sense, we'll find. Exactly. There's a whole element there. I think it's time for a message break.

All right, so we are back. Where were we? There's a woman named Dorothy Lee in 2010 and the Wall Street Journal did a story on her that her husband of 40 years died in a car accident very suddenly, and she started getting chest pains. She thought she was having a heart attack. And it turns out that there is an actual condition, very rarely does it actually lead to death.

Yeah. I think 1 to 3% of the time. But there is a condition discovered in Japan called Broken Heart Syndrome, or... You want to go ahead since you're virtually half Japanese. Takosubo cardiomyopathy. Yeah. And takosubo is a type of pot used to catch octopi, which are called taco in Japan. So fried octopi octopus balls are called takoyaki, which are really delicious, and you will

eat them all the time until you get your hands on ones from a vending machine that you shouldn't have eaten. Because you've had enough takoyaki to last you a lifetime on this trip, and why'd you have to eat the ones out of the vending machine, and now you can't even look at a takoyaki ball again. Yeah. Well, Japan has those crazy vending machines though with all kinds of stuff in there, right? Including some bad takoyaki.

Okay. Well, boy, that was a bonus pronunciation. Pronunciation plus. Takosubo cardiomyopathy. So that is Broken Heart Syndrome, and that is actually a real thing that they identified among five patients in the 90s, early 90s. And they were looking at a cluster of heart patients, 415 of them, of heart attack victims, and only five of these stood out in that they had basically no reason to have a heart attack.

There were no blocked arteries, there was nothing physical going on, they recovered pretty quickly. Way, way more quickly than everybody else. So, yeah, they looked around a little closer. They were like, why did these five people even have a heart attack? What happened? And what they found was possibly that it was brought on by grief or stress. That's right.

They're left ventricles specifically in this condition ballooned, and that's why it resembled the what? Takosubo, the octopus pot. I can say that, it is like you said. It exerted pressure on the heart, and that basically explained a way why people thought they were having a heart attack, even though they weren't, and it's not a heart attack at all. It's heart attack-like, though.

Well, yeah, it's a faux heart attack. And it can kill you like a heart attack, but in a totally different way than like a blocked artery or something like that. Exactly. Yeah, and there's been evidence, who wrote this, was this Conger from Stuff Mom Never Told You? She points out that there's long been both anecdotal evidence and empirical studies where the quote phenomenon end quote of people just dying within like weeks of their spouse

or loved one dying has taken place, and it holds water. There's a study in, I believe, either Finland or Sweden, I wish I knew, man, where they found, it was a 1996 study, I think, where they studied, I think, 150 Finland, 158,000 Finnish couples were studied, and they wanted to find out what the mortality rate was after one couple died, and they found that in the case of sudden, unexpected death, say like in a car accident or something like that, both spouses of both sexes, widows and widowers, had a 50% chance of dying within the first week after that event, 50%. So then they went through, and they found that after that, if you're a man, you have

a 30% chance of dying, I think within a year, and if you're a woman, you know, within six months, and if you're a woman, you have a 20% chance. But they found a direct correlation between the death of a spouse, the sudden death of one spouse, to the death of another, an unexpected mortality, which is an unpredictable mortality, like something you wouldn't expect. That's right. They did another study in Scotland in Israel, which I thought was kind of interesting, but I guess they wanted to...

Well, they're two separate ones, I think. Oh, they were. Okay. With the same design. I thought they just wanted to get a nice range. Right. Like throw a dart at a map. They studied thousands of couples in that one, and they found that the risk of death

was surges between 30% and 50% in the first six months after a loved one passes, not necessarily from unexpected, but just period. And I guess after that six months, it drops down back to a normal range, so just make it through that six months, and you might be okay. Yeah, so they really looked at this like, okay, the Finns were trying to figure out what was behind this, and they found that there is a lot of physical explanation, like the second spouse, the surviving spouse, was in pretty bad health himself or herself. They can chalk it up to economic conditions, where they aren't equipped to keep going on.

Sometimes it's chalked up to a lack of a support network, like they relied a lot on the other person, and now they don't have anyone, and they just die as a result. But there's still this one weird idea that just the lost grief, shock, heartache, if you will, can and has, if not killed a surviving spouse, at the very least sent him to the hospital with this Takosubo cardio myopathy. Yeah. Yeah, they've done, well everyone knows the brain is going to react to stress by sending rushes of cataclysmines for the fight or flight reaction.

We've talked about it dozens of times. That's the one that starts the cascade. Exactly. But they've also done brain imaging studies, and they have found that the pathways, the neuro pathways during a heartache that are stimulated after you've been broken up with, after you've been dumped, are the same as when you pick up like something hot and burn yourself. Yeah.

So like a physical pain and an emotional pain are lighting up the very same neurological pathways. Yeah, I looked into the study. They had some healthy men and women put them in the Wonder Machine, and all of the people in the study had been broken up within the last six months. And so they applied some sort of heat to their arm that was about the same as holding a hot cup of coffee without like a coffee clutch. So what those are called?

Yeah. Okay. And then they showed them pictures of the person who had dumped them and asked them to go over some of their fonder memories with this person and just basically like poked them. Were they just regular pictures or like pictures of them making love to someone new? Who knows what they did. It's a pretty mean study design, but they like needle these people with these, you know,

memories of their lost loves and they found that the same neural pathway lights up, which I'd like to see that study. Yeah. Remember this guy? Yeah. And then they just started birth doing it. What's he doing? Yeah.

Who's he with now? He's like a, he's like at a playground, like pushing his new girlfriend in a sling or something. They're on a teeter daughter. Yeah. So, but the fact that the same neural pathways lit up doesn't mean that, you know, it doesn't prove anything necessarily, but it certainly, it says something interesting, you know. So when they back to the catechromines, adrenaline and noradrenaline are released in such a flood that it actually disables the muscles of the heart, the muscular cells and slows the heart

down like physically slows it down to the point where you think you're having a heart attack. Yes. And it doesn't just have to be like heartbreak. I think that was it New York times that you sent me? One lady, they gave her a surprise party and she thought she was having a heart attack. Yes. She ended up in the ER from this, this concept of broken heart syndrome, tachosubocardiomyopathy.

And I'm not saying it just to show off here. The reason I'm saying is because there is a real lack of agreement in the medical community whether tachosubocardiomyopathy is broken heart syndrome, right, that it is the result of grief or a broken heart or something like that. And it does make sense. They have found that yes, adrenaline, a huge flood of adrenaline brought on by stress, whether it is the sudden loss of a loved one or a surprise party, a surprise party being robbed.

Yeah. Like at gunpoint or something like that. She really stressful event could conceivably trigger this, but they don't know if a broken heart is doing it or if it really actually exists and it's still very new and there's a lack of consensus on it. And the media obviously is going to play something like this up because... Like us. Yeah.

When you hear the story about an old couple in one past... In fact, I just read one last week, I just remember this. I think that Emily sent it to me, this couple, it was that old story, one of them passed away and the other one died that was pretty healthy about a week later and they were married for just some ridiculous amount of time, like 60 something years. Yeah. Not that that's ridiculous bad, but... There's something to it.

Yeah. I've had animals that's happened to. Yeah. When I was a kid, I had a kitten that died and the other one refused to eat basically and was just lethargic and died not too long after. I think you told me about that in the grief one. So sad. The grief episode.

Yeah. And we didn't like... Now we're super into taking our animals to the vet at the drop of a hat, but back then growing up, it was like, I'm not going to disparage my parents, but it was more country style. Yeah. Like you get a cat and you bring them and you throw them in the yard and treat mange with motor oil.

Yeah. Kind of like that. We didn't get a lot of vets. We didn't have a lot of money for vets. Sure. So anyway, it could very well have been something treatable looking back. Maybe. It's pretty sad.

At least you got a heck of a story out of it, right? Yeah. But I think at the very least, it sped it up. I think I might have told you about our two dogs. One of them died of heartworms. That's what it was. And the other one died soon after. I remember dogs, not cats, but then just assumed I was confused.

Yeah. It happened twice. And I told you in that grief episode about the story of the guy who died in the back of the car on the way to his wife's funeral. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So what we're saying, Chuck, there is a demonstrable effect of adrenaline on the heart. And they found there's this John Hopkins study of broken heart syndrome.

And they found that the patients in this study had two to three times the level of adrenaline in their system compared to people who were actually having heart attacks, like real heart attacks. That's substantial. They were from seven to 34 times the normal levels of adrenaline in their system. Holy cow. With the ballooned left ventricle. Yeah.

So. There you have it. Yeah. Adrenaline definitely does affect the heart whether or not the sudden loss of a spouse can trigger that is what's up for debate. I think it can. I don't think they have to call it only broken heart syndrome. Why can't they call it sometimes broken heart syndrome?

You know? I don't know. Why not? That's what I think. I think this story, which is are women more susceptible to this than men? Supposedly. It's pretty rare. It affects between one and two percent of people who underwent diagnostic testing for

their heart. I think this is the Johns Hopkins study. Is it? Yeah. But in 2007 they found that 80 percent, I'm sorry, 89 percent of the more than 6,000 reported cases were females. Yes. And in 2011, the AMA, I'm sorry, the AHA, American Heart Association, said women over

the age of 55 or about three times more likely to develop it than younger women. Takosubo cardiomyopathy is what we're talking about. Yes. Age and gender. This is a recognized legitimate medical condition. Yes. Again, what's up for debate is whether or not. I just want to make sure we're not saying like the American Heart Association saying

like, oh yeah, there's all these cases of broken heart syndrome. Well, that's what Conger, the point she makes is that while you might think like, oh, women can't handle stress as much, it's not necessarily true. No, no. Those numbers are true and it is like why do women tend to develop Takosubo cardiomyopathy more than men? But not necessarily more emotionally drained. Because of broken heart.

Yeah. Because they found out that widow-ers are more likely to die than a widow after their spouse has recently died. Yeah. Ten percent more likely, remember? Because that on its head. Yes. So it could have something to do with, because older women are more likely to develop it

than younger women, so it could have to do with postmenopausal levels of hormones. Women might handle stress differently than men, or their hearts are more susceptible to interruption from adrenaline. Right. Who knows? Yeah. But it doesn't mean that it's because a woman can't take bereavement, is I think what Congress saying.

Right. It's very sweet stories though. It's like the Titanic couple that laid down together in the movie and just died in the bed together while they were working. Oh yeah. Apparently that's true. Were those the Asters? I don't know.

But apparently it happened on deck. There was a real couple who just like, they were lashing like just sitting in the deck chairs together holding hands. Like the Goots. Like the Goots. Very sweet stuff. It is very sweet. Sweet and sad.

Bitter sweet, I think they call that. Yeah. You knew it complete. If you want to learn more about broken heart syndrome, aka Takosubo cardiomyopathy, I defy you to type that word into the search bar at HowStuffWorks.com. If you can, it will bring you up this great article and since I said search bar, it's time for a listener mail. Then we did that podcast on Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier and we asked for

people who have their version of that in their own country. We heard from a lot of people and we're going to highlight Australia because we like those people and they even lead off with a good day, Josh and Chuckers. They know to give us what we want. Proof that they're Australian. Just wanted to share with you guys some information about Australia's national hero, Ned Kelly. Yeah, following the Great Davy Crockett podcast, perhaps this stems from our convict heritage, but our national hero was a notorious criminal.

A Bush Ranger is what they call them. A Bush Ranger is another word for a bandit, you think? She said it's a term for a runaway convict, come horse thief highway man. That's a bandit. Exactly. I want to be highway man. Do you like Willie Nelson? Yeah, that was a great group.

Willie Nelson. Johnny Cash. Johnny Cash. Chris Christofferson. Chris Christofferson and Randy Newman, right? No. Who was the four? Randy Newman.

No. Come on. That was way funny. No, it's funny. I'm sorry, but I was so fixated on who the fourth highway man was. Or was it just you? Chris Christofferson. Johnny Cash.

Don't look it up. I'm not going to look it up. Willie Nelson and Roy Orberson. No. He's a traveling Wilbur. Yeah. Jeff Lynn is the forgotten Wilbury. I don't know.

He's a genius. Man, ELO is great. I'm just now starting to realize how good he is. I saw a really good documentary on him. Oh, yeah? Yeah. You can't watch it and not go, oh, this guy is a genius. How did you get Chris Christofferson?

If you remember Chris Christofferson, the fourth one has to be like mind boggling. Oh, it was Whale and Jennings. Oh, boom. Wachtosh. That's what they call him. Did you know that? No. Wachtosh Whale and Jennings.

Really? Sure. His son is awesome too, by the way. Shooter. All right. That was a nice little sidebar. He's married to, did you watch the Sopranos? Yeah.

Dre De Matteo. The daughter? Christopher's girlfriend. No, I didn't watch it like that much. She's married to Shooter Jennings. Okay. Where were we? Highwaymen.

Okay. Ned Kelly. After an incident back in the late 1870s, Ned Kelly killed 13, I'm sorry, three policemen and he barricaded himself in his house and made a suit of armor. In fact, No cardboard. Well, sort of. In fact, it was so shoddy that it looked more like a trash can turned upside down on his

head. In the final standoff at Glen Rowan, which is the town of Victoria, the police shot at him many times, leaving him very bruised inside of his tin can. However, he actually survived the siege, only to be caught and hanged in 1880, his final documented words being such as life. While I'm sure we Australians have a few other notable, honest heroes, Ned Kelly remains the most identifiable symbol for the underclass rising up against an oppressive British governance despite his criminality.

Perhaps one day you can do a Ned Kelly show in his tin can armor, share the riveting pun intended story with the rest of your listeners with kindest regards, Michelle. Thanks. And there have been a bunch of movies on Ned Kelly. Especially Ned Kelly. A movie. A movie Fledger. And then there was...

I was seeing that? Yeah, he was Ned Kelly. Really? And Orlando Bloom paid his little sidekick, I think. Oh. Oh, but that was pretty good. I didn't see it. There were a couple of top-notch actors.

Sure. And Mick Jagger played him in a 1973 movie. Did he really? Yeah. Weird. Not a top-notch actor. I can imagine. And apparently there's been like eight or nine other like Australian-only movies about

him. So he's right up there with the crocodile Dundee, I think. That's their national hero from what I understand. That's a knife. Right. I knew what he was doing. Sure. He understood life.

Paul Kogan. Yeah. Paul Kogan. Yeah. No. Crack it out Dundee. Paul Kogan. He's still around, right?

Sure. Remember, is the one where he played an angel with Cuba Gooding Jr.? Angels in the outfield? No. No. That's Gary Coleman. Highway to heaven? No.

That's Michael Landon. I don't know. I don't remember what it was called either, but he played like an... Is this Australian angel? Like a B and E guardian angel, like just a thief who died and was sent back to be a guardian angel. To Cuba Gooding Jr.? I believe it was him.

Interesting. Show me the money. Well, let's end this, shall we? We can keep going if you want. I know. I'll do this all day. People are like, wow, a podcast three hours long on Broken Heart? Yeah.

It all begins with Ned Kelly. If you want to tell us about anything you like. Yeah. How about it like a nice, sweet story about either pets or people passing together? That's a good one. Hand in hand, or Paul and Paul. Yeah. If you want to do that, we want to hear it.

You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast at discovery.com. And you can join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts.