SYSK Selects: Can you die of a broken heart?

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?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, this is Josh and I picked this episode of
s Y s K Selects just because I thought it
was a sweet one. Uh and maybe a lot of
you haven't listened to it yet. It was based on
an article written by our former colleague Christen Conger lately
of stuff Mom never told you, and it has it all.
It has quaint Japanese medical terms, suicide pacts among long

(00:24):
married couples, and a listener male about Australian national hero
Ned Kelly, plus the whole idea of dying from a
broken heart. It's 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 House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to

(00:49):
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and this is Stuff you Should Know the podcast. That's right,
let's throw back Wednesdays. It is it did the cheeks
to day. Oh yeah, you did the first time in
a long time. Yeah, but that was for um a
take that was abandoned within ten seconds, so it doesn't count. Yeah,

(01:10):
a rare, aborted first take that just doesn't happen. No,
but you want to tell him why? My brain had
some sort of weird uh 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 Die
have a Broken Heart? And I realized what that Chuck
had just been singing? Where do broken Hearts go? And

(01:31):
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. It was
a little weird to hit you that late, Like why
I was Chuck sing in Whitney Houston? Is that Whitney?
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, bitter sweet. I knew it complete? What is

(01:57):
that the band Billy Joel? Okay Uh's piano man? Come on,
sadness sweet? And I knew it complete when I never
realized that what he was saying was I knew it completely. Okay, Um,
I want to tell you about Dr Daniel and Kitty
Goot of Milwaukee. Either Goot or GOOTI g ut. Back

(02:19):
in two thousand ten, um. Their daughter, I believe, came
over and found um her parents, who were in their eighties,
um in their garage with a bunch of helium tanks
around him. Uh, with tubes coming from the helium tanks
going to plastic bags that the goots had over their head.

(02:40):
And they were dead helium tanks. Huh, helium instead of
just a car. Yeah. Interesting, um, And they had taken
their own lives. Uh. Dr goot Um was actually really
good health, but his wife had something called poly mayalgia
rheumatica phr UM and she was so ring from dementia.

(03:01):
And the two had been um together for fifty three years,
and they decided that they were going to end their
lives together. They were spouses that they didn't want to
be a part. One didn't want to live on without
the other. So they thought they were close enough to
the end. I guess yeah, And uh, well she was
and he was in good health, but he didn't want

(03:22):
to live without her, apparently, so they took their lives together. Um.
And apparently this is something this articles from two thousand ten,
and this I don't want to call it a trend,
but it's a 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

(03:45):
people who have been together for a long time, where um,
one is dying or one's health is taking a real
turn and they decided 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. There's another

(04:06):
more mysterious way that couples die virtually together. Um. And
it got a lot of press last year, and it's
something called broken heart syndrome. Yeah, there's this this idea,
This is the very romantic idea sure that if you
really love somebody and they die, you're gonna die of
a broken heart eventually afterwards. It's possible biologically medically speaking,

(04:32):
it makes almost no sense whatsoever. But there actually has
been some there's a it's very new this idea, um,
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

(04:53):
the heart is the organ that pumps blood, So it
has nothing to do with love. But you're 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

(05:14):
the literal sense will find exactly okay. So the whole
anament 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 two thousand ten in
the Wall Street Journal did a story on her that

(05:34):
her husband of forty years died in a car accident
very suddenly, and she started getting chest pains. She thought
she's 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 one to three percent
of the time. But there is a condition discovered in
Japan called broken heart syndrome or uh, you know what

(05:59):
you want to go ahead and your virtually half Japanese
taco subo cardio myopathy. Taco subo is a It's a
type of pot used to catch octopi, which are called
taco in um Japan, so fried octopi octopus balls are
called taco yaki, which are really delicious, and you will
eat them all the time until you get your hands

(06:20):
on ones from a vending machine that you shouldn't have
eaten because you've had enough taco yaki to last year
lifetime on this trip. And why did you have to
eat the ones out of the vending machine and now
you can't even look at a taco yaki ball again. Yeah, well,
Japan has those crazy vending machines though, with like all
kinds of stuff in there, right, including some bed taco
yaki okay um boy, that was a bonus pronunciation pronunciation

(06:44):
plus taco subo. Cardio myopathy, so that is broken heart syndrome,
and that is actually a real thing that they identified
among five patients in the nineties early nineties, and they
were looking at at a cluster of heart patients four
fifteen of them of heart attack victims, and only five
of these stood out and that they had no basically

(07:06):
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. Yeah,
they've looked around a little closer. They were like, why
did these five people even have a heart attack? What
what happened, and what they found was possibly that it
was brought on by grief or stress. That's right. Their

(07:29):
left ventricles, specifically in this condition ballooned and that's why
it resembled the the what the taco subo? Yeah, the
octopus pot. I can say that it is like you're
saying that, um, it exerted pressure on the heart and
that you know, basically explained away why people thought they
were having a heart attack even though they wasn't. It's

(07:50):
not a heart attack at all. It's heart attack like though, well, yeah,
it's a fox 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.
You know, Yeah, and this isn't there there's been evidence,
Uh who wrote this was his conger from stuff Mom
never told you. She points out that there's long been um,

(08:13):
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's it holds water. There's this study, um in I
believe either Finland or Sweden. I wish I knew man UM.

(08:37):
Where they found it was a study I think where
they they studied UM, I think a hundred and fifty
fin in Finland, a hundred and fifty eight thousand 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 UM sudden unexpected death,

(09:01):
say like in a car accident or something like that,
both spouses of both sexes, widows and widowers UM had
a fifty percent chance of dying within the first week
after that event. So then they went through and they
found that UM, after that, if you're a man, you
have a thirty percent chance of dying UM, I think

(09:24):
within a year, and if you're a woman, you know
within six months, and if you're a woman you have
a twenty chance. But they found a direct correlation between
the death of a spouse, the sudden death of one
spouse to the death of another. Unexpected mortality, which is
an unpredictable mortality, like something you wouldn't expect, that's right.

(09:45):
They did another study in Scotland and Israel, which I
thought was kind of interesting, but I guess they wanted to, well,
there are two separate ones, I think with the same design.
I thought they just want to get a nice rang
right like that, though it darted a map UM. They
studied that sense of couples in that one and they
found that the risk of death was UH surges between
thirty and fifty in the first six months after a

(10:07):
loved one passes, not necessarily from unexpected but this period
and uh, 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.
The Finns, UM, we're trying to figure out what was
behind this. And they found that there is a lot

(10:28):
of physical explanation. Like the second spouse, the surviving spouse,
UM was still it was in pretty bad health right
himself or herself. UM. They can chalk it up to
economic conditions where they aren't equipped to keep going on. UM.
Sometimes it's chalked out to a lack of a support network,

(10:49):
like they relied a lot on the other person and
now they don't have anyone and they just die UM
as a result. But there's still this one weird idea
that just the loss, grief, shock, heartache if you will,
can and has, if not killed a surviving spouse at

(11:13):
the very least sent him to the hospital with this
UM taco subo cardio myopathy. Yeah. Uh yeah, they've they've
done UM. Well, everyone knows the brain is gonna react
to stress by sending rushes of cataclo mines for the
fight or flight reaction. We talked about it dozens of times.

(11:35):
That's the one that starts the cascade exactly. Uh. And
they've but they've also done brain imaging studies and they
have found that UM, the pathways, the neuropathways during a
heartache that are stimulated after you've been broken up with
have you been dumped is are the same as when
you pick up like something hot and burn yourself, So

(11:55):
like a physical pain and an emotional pain or lighting
up the very same neurological pathways. I looked into the
study they had UM some healthy men and women put
them in the wonder machine UM and all all of
the people in the study have been broken up within
the last six months, and so they they applied some
sort of heat to their arm that was about the

(12:16):
same as holding a hot cup of coffee without like
a coffee clutch. Um, so what those are called? And
then uh, they then they showed them pictures of there
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 where they just regular

(12:38):
pictures or like pictures of them making love to someone
near who knows what they did. It's a pretty mean
study design, but they like needled these people with these
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. Ye remember this guy? Yeah,
and then they just started who's he with now? Is

(13:00):
like a he's like at a playground, like pushing his
new girlfriend and his swing right there on a teeter. Daughter.
Um but 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's certainly it says something interesting,
you know. Uh So when they back to the cataclomnes

(13:22):
um adrenaline and nora adrenaline are released in such a
flood that it actually disables the muscles of the heart,
the muscular cells, and slows the heart down, um 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

(13:44):
gave her a surprise party and she thought she was
having a heart attack. Yes, she ended up in the
e er. From this, this concept of um broken heart
syndrome tuckasubo cardio myopathy. And I'm not saying it's just
to show off here, you're The reason I'm saying is
because there is a real um lack of agreement in
the medical community whether taco subo cardio myopathy is broken

(14:09):
heart syndrome, that it is the result of grief for
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 surprise party,
a surprise party, being robbed um like at gunpoint, or
something like that. Any really stressful event could conceivably trigger

(14:32):
this UM. But there they don't know if like a
if a broken heart is doing it or if it
really actually exists, and and there's still this is 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 a
story about an old couple in one past. In fact,

(14:52):
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 sixty something years. It's not
that that's ridiculous bad. Yeah, I've had animals that that's

(15:15):
happened to. When I was a kid, I had a
kitten that died and uh, 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. Yeah, and we didn't. Like now, we're
super into taking animals to the vet like at the
drop of a hat, But back then, growing up, it

(15:35):
was like, I'm not gonna disparage my parents, but it
was more country style. Yeah, like you get a cat
and you bring him and you throw him in the yard.
Treat mains with motor oil was kind of like that.
We didn't get a lot of vets. We didn't have
a lot of money for vets um, So anyway, it
could very well have been something treatable. Looking back, maybe

(15:55):
it's pretty sad. You got a heck of a story
out of it, right, Yeah, But I think at the
very at least it it's sped it up. I think
I might have told you about our two dogs, one
of them that at heartworms. That's what any other one.
Soon after I remember dogs, not cats, But then I
just assumed I was confused. 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, and like we

(16:19):
were saying too, like there there is a demonstrable effect
of adrenaline on the heart, and they found there's this
John Hopkins study of broken heart syndrome UM, and they
found that the the patients in this study had two
to three times the level of adrenaline in their system

(16:40):
compared to people who are actually having heart attacks like
real heart attacks substantial and they had anywhere from seven
to thirty four times the normal levels of adrenaline in
their system with the balloon left ventricle. So there you
have it. Yeah, adrenaline definitely does affect the heart. Whether
or not the sudden loss of us spouse can trigger

(17:01):
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.
So there's another part to this story, um, which is
our women more susceptible to this than men. Supposedly, it's

(17:22):
pretty rare. It affects between one and two um of
people who underwent diagnostic testing for their heart I think
this is the Johns Hopkins study, is it? But in
two thousand seven they found I'm sorry eighty nine of
the more than six thousand reported cases were females. Yes,

(17:43):
And in two thousand eleven the A M A I'm
sorry the a h A American Heart Association said women
over the age of fifty five or about three times
more likely to develop it. Than younger women. Taco subo
cardiomyopathy is what we're talking about to age and gender.
This is a recognized, legitimate medical condition. Again, what's up
for debate is whether or not I just want to

(18:05):
make sure we're not saying like the American Heart Associations
saying like, oh, yeah, there's all these cases of broken
heart syndrome. Well that's that's what conor. The point she
makes is that while you might think, like, oh, women
can't handle stress as much, it's not necessarily true. Um. No, No,
those numbers are true, and it is like, why do
women tend to develop subo cardio myopathy but not necessarily

(18:28):
more emotionally because of broken heart? Yeah? Because they found
out that widowers are more likely to die at than
a widow after their spouse was recently done ten percent
more likely. Remember, Yeah, so it turns out on its head. Yes,
so it's it could be it could have something to
do with um because older women are more likely to
develop it than younger women. So it could have to

(18:50):
do with the post menopausal levels of hormones. Um, women
might handle stress differently than men, or their hearts are
more are susceptible to interruption. From adrenaline. Who knows. But
it doesn't mean that it's because a woman can't take
a bereavement, is I think what Congress saying? Very sweet

(19:12):
stories though it's like the Titanic, the Titanic couple that
laid down together in the movie and just died in
the bed together. Wh Yeah, apparently that's true. Was the asters?
I don't know, but apparently it happened. Um on deck Um,
there was a real couple who just like that. They
were lasting, like just sitting in the deck chairs together,

(19:34):
holding hands like the goots, like the goots. Very sweet stuff.
It is very sweet, sweet and sad bittersweet. I think
they call that um you knew it complete. If you
want to learn more about broken heart syndrome a k a.
Taco Subo cardiomyopathy, I defy you to type that word

(19:55):
into the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
If you can, it will bring up this great article.
And since I said church bar, time for a listener mail.
Remember we did that podcast on Davy Crockett King to
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 gonna highlight Australia

(20:17):
because we like those people. Uh and they even lead
off with a good day Josh and Chuckers. They give
us what we want, proof that they're Australian. Um just
wanted to share with you guys some information about Australia's
national hero, Ned Kelly. Uh yeah, following the Great Davy
Crockett podcast. Perhaps the stems from our convict heritage, but

(20:41):
our national hero was a notorious criminal. A bush ranger,
that's what they called them. A bush rangers in another
word for a bandit. You think she said it's a
term for a runaway convict. Um, come horse thief, highwayman,
that's a bandit exactly. I want to be a highwayman?
Do you like Willie Nelson? Yeah? That was a great group.

(21:03):
Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Johnny Cash, Chris Christofferson, Chris Christofferson
and Randy Newman. Right, and now who was the fourth
Randy Newson? Come on? That was way funny. No, it's funny.
I'm sorry, but I was so fixated on who the
fourth Highwayman was or was it just Chris Christofferson Johnny Cash.
Don't look, I'm not gonna look at that Willie Nelson

(21:24):
and uh, I want to say Orberson and jeff Lynn
has the forgotten Willbury, Um that he's a genius. Man
Yellow is great. It's just now starting to realize how good.
I saw a really good documentary on him. Yeah, it's
it's you can't watch it and not go. This guy
is a genius. Chris, how did you get Chris Christofferson?

(21:44):
If if you remember Chris Christofferson, the fourth one has
to be like mine. Whale and Jennings. Oh boom, walk
Tosh that's what they call him. Did you know that? No,
walk Tosh, Whale and Jenny. His son is awesome, is
by the way Shooter? Yeah all right, that was a
nice little sidebar. He's married to Uh did you watch

(22:08):
the Sopranos? Uh? Yeah, Dre Demanteo the daughter Christopher's Christopher's girlfriend. No,
I didn't watch it like that. Yeah, she's married to
Shooter Jennings. Okay, where were highwaymen? Ned Kelly? After an
incident back in the late eighteen seventies, Ned Kelly killed thirteen,

(22:30):
I'm sorry, three policemen. He barricaded himself in his house
and made a suit of armor. In fact, that a
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 glenn 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

(22:52):
be caught and hanged in eighteen eighty, his final documented
words being such as life. While I'm sure we Australians
have a few other doable, honest heroes, Ned Kelly remains
the most identified, identifiable symbol for the underclass rising up
against an oppressive British governance. Despite his criminality, perhaps one
day you can do in that Kelly show and his

(23:13):
tin can arnorom share the riveting, pun intended story with
the rest of your listeners with kind disregards, Michelle. And
There's been a bunch of movies on Ned Kelly, especially
Nate Kelly movie with Heath Ledger and then yeah he
was Ned Kelly in Orlando Bloom paid his little sidekick.
I think, Oh, but that's pretty good. I didn't see it.

(23:35):
There are a couple of top notch actors and Mick
Jagger played him in the nineteen Yeah weird. Not a
top notch a 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 the national hero from what I understand, that's
a nice yeah, like I knew what he was doing.

(23:57):
He understood life. Paul Cogan, Paul Hogan. Yeah, no, crack
it out, Undie. Paul Hogan still around right? Remember is
the one where he played an angel with Cuba Gooding Jr.
Angels in the Outfield? No, that's Gary Coleman Hiway to Heaven. No,
that's Michael Landon. I don't know. I don't remember what

(24:20):
it was called either, but he played the Australian Angel.
He played like a B and E guardian angel, like
like just a thief who died and was sent back
to be to be a guardian angel for good jor
I believe it was him. Interesting, show me the money. Well,
let's let's end this show. I'm gonna keep going. People

(24:44):
are like, wow, a podcast three hours long on Broken Heart.
It all begins with Ned Kelly uh. If you want
to tell us about anything, you're 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

(25:05):
Paul and Paul. Yeah. Um, if you want to do that,
we want to hear it. You can tweet to us
at s y ESK podcast. You can join us on
Facebook dot com, slash Stuff you Should Know. You can
send us an email to Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com,
and you can join us at our home on the web,
Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this

(25:28):
and thousands of other topics, Is it how Stuff Works
dot com