June 30, 2010 • 17 mins
Someone who is suffering from emotional stress and pain is said to have a "broken heart," but only in a metaphorical sense. Sometimes, however, the damage can be physical. Find out how Broken Heart Syndrome works -- and if it's fatal -- in this episode.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. I have
(00:21):
one of the saddest questions in the world for you know, well,
can you die of a broken heart? You know, it
can feel that way sometimes, Kristen, it really can, but
only certain people can, which is not a reassuring answer
at all. You know, at first I thought would be
great if, like, for the first five minutes of this podcast,
we just tricked listeners somehow into thinking that we were
(00:43):
gonna take this question metaphorically and just talk about our
feelings and how it feels like our heart might break.
Sometimes That's not what we're gonna do, know, We're gonna
talk about like how really like your actual heart muscle
can break. Now, when we think of the metaphorical broken heart,
we think of being dumped maybe, um, someone a spouse, dying,
(01:04):
extreme disappointment. Um. What else the store being out of waffles? Um?
So I mean, like there are a lot of things
that you say, oh, that broke my heart. Yeah. But
normally it's just like, Oh, I'm sad, I'm gonna eat
a lot of ice creams. But in a certain subset
of people, there's a condition called broken heart syndrome, and
(01:29):
it's sort of spurred on by the same things. Uh.
If you feel extreme emotion or stress after someone died,
after you got dumped, um, even just down to the
stress of public speaking, uh, learning a new task, that
stress can literally break your heart. One old lady got
broken heart syndrome because of a surprise party for her
(01:50):
surprise birthday party, and it broke her heart. So what
we're talking about today is broken heart syndrome, which is
this thing it feels a lot like a heart attack.
And but once these doctors got in the emergency room
with these women who claimed they were having a heart
attack and bio the way it is normally women more
than men about you know, nine ones the ratio they
(02:14):
would get them and to do the test to figure out,
you know, what was going on with their heart. Um,
and they would they would look at the lab results
and they'd be like, this sounds like a heart attack,
but it doesn't look like a heart attack. This is
not showing up on the test scans like a heart
attack would, right, And the condition is actually called cardiomyopathy
and it was first described medically by Japanese doctors. And
(02:38):
these Japanese doctors were looking at the shape of these
these broken hearts, if you will, and they said, you
know what that looks a lot like and the other
doctor was like yeah, and the first doctor was like,
an octopus net Yeah, because when this happens to your heart,
you know, you have the symptoms that are heart attackle like,
(03:00):
but what's going on is your left ventricle expands. And
because these Japanese doctors were the first to see it,
they got to name it after this octopus phishing device
like a pot or a base or a net um.
So they originally described it in as tacu supu cardio myopathy.
That was probably not pronounced right, but basically it's sword
(03:21):
for octopus and pot. So I wanted to call this
podcast what do octopus pots and broken hearts have in common?
But that seemed like a far reach and might confuse
you guys. Yeah. Um, so, like you said, though, broken
heart syndrome as octopus heart pot is known colloquially in
the medical community happens in women far more often than men,
(03:44):
and a lot of times the women are fifty or older.
A lot of times we got we're talking about post
menopausal women, which will be key because when we talk
about why this happens, that might be a factor. But
you know, they'd get the women in there, and these
women had no prior history of heart heart problems or
heart disease that all they can find is this enlarge
left ventricle and there are no blockages in the artery
(04:06):
because a normal heart attack is caused by those blockages
in the artery. That's what hurts the heart. But what
happened in two thousand five, there's this pretty landmark studying
the New England Journal in Medicine from Johns Hopkins, and
they looked at these these women who would come in
complaining of this heart problem without the clot showing up
on the test, with these left ventricles, and what they
realized is these women had much higher than normal levels
(04:29):
of stress hormones in their blood. Yeah, and and that's
why doctor Scott Sharkey, who's a cardiologist who studied this
um he refers to broken heart syndrome as more of
a concussion of the heart, like something that is just
triggered by almost like blunt trauma, if you will, sting
the heart. Yes, stunning of the heart, but as opposed
(04:51):
to a heart attack, which obviously takes a while to recover.
A lot of these people were almost over halfway back
to normal within forty to seventy two hours. Yeah, you can.
You can die from it. To answer the question of
our of our episode, very literally, some people have died
from this, uh, stunning of the heart. But they the
reason that it's gotten so much awareness lately. As some
(05:13):
of these Johns Hopkins doctors want patients to know that
just because you're going in with symptoms of a heart
attack doesn't mean it may be a heart attack, and
it doesn't mean you need to be on heart medication
for the rest of your life. You need to be
sure that you tell your doctor if anything really stressful,
like a broken heart, that you know, the kind of
stuff that that you would describe as breaking your heart,
you need to tell them that things like that have happened.
(05:35):
Don't ignore any possible emotional factors that could have been
triggering all this stress. And it can be something as
simple as they said. One lady just got stress over
trying to learn new computer software. Um. But then we
also associate this, like we said, with a broken heart,
with one spouse dying and the other just taking it
so hard that they have heart problems as well. Right.
(05:56):
And although this is referred to as broken heart syndrome
because I mean, can you think of a catchier medical condition.
I mean, that's just asking for news coverage. But I
think that, uh, this data has shown that that really
only happens in terms of like it being a result
of extreme emotional trauma, you know, the widowing or the
(06:17):
breakup or what have you, only happens in about of
the cases. And the thing is your heart can break
not once but twice. Molly, that's even even sadder. Uh.
And in ten percent of ten percent of the time
this will happen again. So in ten percent it can
happen again. Um, but you know you are in control.
That's another message that people that doctors want people are
(06:39):
just sort of take away from the publicizing of this
condition is that if you are under a lot of
emotional stress, if someone did die, if you are just
freaked out about learning this new computer software, find ways
to manage that stress. Don't just you know, hold it
all inside. Um. There are times when just the shock
of the stress is gonna just throw you into you know,
a stunt situation perhaps, But when you know that you're
(07:01):
dealing with things like this, some people do deal with
it better than others. Those people tend to do things
like eat well, exercise, sleep well. And they don't know yet.
To get back to what Kristen was talking about with
this post menopausal women, they don't know yet exactly what
could cause those high stressed levels in some people and
not others. It's possible that after a severe stressful incident,
(07:22):
these women just don't take as good care of themselves
and you know, weakens their immune system, or as possible
that because these women have gone through menopause, there might
be something with estrogen levels that are causing this to
happen in some people but not others. Right. But um,
of course there are outliers, as there are most always
with with health conditions. Um, because while the median age
(07:43):
is sixty three for this to happen, it's happened to
you or seven year old, it's happened to a thirty
two year old, and it can happen to you well
they're saying, you know, doctors may not know how to
diagnose it, which is one of the key reasons you
need to tell your doctor if something really stressful. It's happened.
It's only been since that New England Journal of Medicine
article has come out that you know. You know, one
of the doctors was talking about presenting it at a
(08:05):
conference and afterwards all these doctors came up to him
and was like, yeah, I think I saw that and
just didn't know at the time, because you know, if
it if you know, if it quacks like a duck
and it walks like a duck, you think it's a duck.
But this looks like a heart attack and isn't a
heart attack. It doesn't quack like a heart attack. It doesn't.
I mean, it may feel like a heart attack to you,
but there are different ways you can recover from it.
(08:27):
I mean, the treatment will pretty much be the same
until they figure out that it's not a heart attack,
and you may save yourself a lot of unnecessary surgery
or medications if you know it's not a heart attack.
But Molly, it's It's really good though that we are
talking about this when we are, because we are knee
deep in broken heart season. That's true. I didn't think
(08:50):
about that. And do you realize Molly, watch out, tell me,
tell us all about the broken heart season? Well, obvio
would think you would think could be like right after
Valentine's Day, whenever, right before wheneverone breaks up so they
don't have to be together on Valentine's Day. It's not
that is. I don't know how that is. I survived
this year. Now, as doctors have been looking into this more,
(09:12):
I mean, if we think about it, the first instances
where happened in what now we're in two thousand ten,
and so they're actually starting to draw some you know,
some correlations between things. And they have found that a
majority of broken heart syndrome cases occur during the spring
and summer months, and that's the complete opposite of a
(09:32):
seasonal timing of heart attacks, which tend to occur during
the winter months, which makes them wonder even more, you know,
what actually happens with his broken heart syndrome. It can't
just be because your heart muscles weekend like it is
during um a heart attack. So there's still more to
come on this. There are a lot of unknowns, but
it's pretty interesting, And as you said, it's it's begging
(09:54):
for press coverage because how many times have you said,
I could just just die he broke up me, I
could just die. I've never said that, actually, now that
I think about it, that's right, Molly, because you won't die.
You won't die buck up unless you're in a certain
percentage of post metal puzzle women. But the thing is,
I think it's worth um closing things out though, with
the fact that similar types of health conditions can occur
(10:18):
to men, because while broken heart syndrome happens a lot
to women, older women, and we associate with, you know,
like their husband dying suddenly or something like that. We
there is another thing called the widow effect widowhood effect
um that has been noted by researcher Nicholas A. Christakis,
who has tracked and like huge studies on tracking um
(10:41):
social contagions such as whether or not happiness is contagious
and also kind of on the morbid side of things,
whether or not death can be contagious. So he has
done a lot of research on this topic. Will take
the morbid side of that equation that you were just
talking about, Kristen. Sometimes you'll see in obituaries, you'll see
where a woman died, and you know, the newspaper might
(11:02):
remark that this was only a few weeks after her
husband died, and so she and Kristakis wanted to get
to the root of this kind of issue. You know,
does the remaining spouse just give up on life and
want to be with the person they're married to for
all these years? Do they take do they not take
as good care of themselves? Do they stop seeing the doctor?
Why would such a thing happen? And so he's done.
If you were a few studies kind of tracking different variables,
(11:26):
and one of the ones that was most interesting to
me was that your spouse is cause of death might
have an effect on whether you then will die shortly thereafter, right,
because while he did find that mortality after widowhood does
go up for husbands and wives, Essentially, if your wife dies,
(11:47):
it's associated with an eighteen percent increase in across the
board mortality for their husbands their widows um and then
if the husband dies, then there's a sixteen percent increase
and the wife following in suit. But it isn't the
same across the board for every type of illness. It
(12:08):
depends kind of those Those numbers will fluctuate depending on
the the spouse's cause of death. So, for instance, let's
talk about cancer. Just to take things down another notch um,
there was a statistically significant effect of widowhood on cancer
mortality mortality for older people, especially with colon and lung cancer.
(12:30):
So basically, if say a husband dies from colon or
lung cancer, there is a decent chance that the wife
will follow in suit. However, for um rarer types of
cancer such as cancer the head, neck, upper gas, for
intentional track, liver, central nervous system, pancreas, etcetera. Uh, those
(12:52):
chances go down. And what was funny was this study
found that there are more diseases that will affect man's
mortality rate than a woman's, which is kind of contradictory
to this broken heart syndrome, which does affect women more
often than men. So it's I mean, there's really no
conclusion to make. It was just sort of an interesting
(13:13):
interesting thing to note, all right, Molly. So now that
I am a little scared of stressing myself out too
much this summer because I might die in the high
season of broken heart syndrome, and I'm never getting married
so that I can't die right after a spouse. That's
a good way to plan in your life. I think
(13:33):
we should end things on a high note, and mentioned
that while it is probably pretty pretty well covered in
the media and you might have heard of it before,
there's a very slim chance that's going to happen to you.
It's the broken heart syndrome. The broken heart syndrome. Yes,
um data suggests that only about twelve thousand Americans might
(13:56):
have it in any given year. And yeah, that's twelve
thousand of marreor Ppkins, and that's you know, a lot
of people if you put them all in one room together.
But it probably won't be you. But that doesn't have
to stop you from writing a great song about your
broken heart and sending it to us, because where would
the music industry be without the idea of the broken heart? Nowhere? Nowhere.
(14:18):
And on that note, let's read some incredibly dramatic emails,
all right, I have one that's not signed. It's about
the boob Politics podcast listener writes, I was surprised that
you barely touched on the French Revolution. I'm a huge
fan Napoleon, and when I was reading a biography of
his wife, Josephine. It talked at length about how there
(14:38):
was an entire period of the Revolution after where higher
classes would wear gauzy toka like dresses that often left
one breast completely out in the open while the other
was lightly wrapped in a sea through fabric. Also on
the subject of big boobs and professionalism, I find the
standards reversed in my specific profession. I'm one of my
school's three news anchors, and the bustiest of us at
(14:59):
a robust thirty are deep. My fellow anchors, and I
get more comments from people around school, mostly guys, about
what was on the news when we're showing more cleavage.
I hate to think of using boops to get other
students to pay attention to the news, but if it works,
dot dot dot All right, well, I have one here
from Rick about food politics as well, and he says,
(15:23):
I think the most diserving thing about how young women
are using the hard one personal expressive freedom rested for
them by first and second wave women livers is expressed
by their choosing the easy, slutty grunge garb over more
meaningful accomplishments now open to them In academics and the
professional work world. Maybe it's always been this way, but
(15:44):
what a shame people are like we are. I guess
I expect too much from evolution, and so does my wife,
who was married a man with chronic man steridis. Sunglasses
help interesting Alright, we got one from Ken that will
close out because it's a question I think that everyone
can help answer. This is on the episode about the
(16:05):
history of the bikini, and he writes that podcast was
both informative entertaining, but I think you left at one
very important question, which is the sexier a one piece
or two? While popular culture seems to depict the two
piece as the hands down winner, I'd be curious of
pulling data showed the same, and if these differences were
the same among men and women. I've always perceived the
two pieces to revealing, thus taking away from a woman's
(16:27):
potential sexiness. Not seeing everything exposed often stimulates more imagination intrigue,
and the one piece accentuates the natural curves and beauty
of a woman's figure. Was the one piece not partly
to blame for the success of Baywatch? Had the actors
all been wearing bikinis, it just would have been the same.
I'm just wondering if this is the broader view or
if my take is skewed. So there's a question for everyone,
(16:50):
which do you like more? Yeah? One or two? One
or two? Well, and for all your good questions. You
know where to send him mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com and dear in the week, you should
follow me and Molly on Twitter it's a mom stuff podcast,
and then on Facebook we are stuff Mom Never Told You.
And as always, you can head over to our blog
(17:11):
during the week if you'd like a little lecture reading material.
It's our blog stuff Mom Never Told You, and it's
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
blogs on the house. Stuff works dot com home page.
(17:35):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From housetop works dot Com. Hey there, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly. Molly. I have
(00:21):
one of the saddest questions in the world for you know, well,
can you die of a broken heart? You know, it
can feel that way sometimes, Kristen, it really can, but
only certain people can, which is not a reassuring answer
at all. You know, at first I thought would be
great if, like, for the first five minutes of this podcast,
we just tricked listeners somehow into thinking that we were
(00:43):
gonna take this question metaphorically and just talk about our
feelings and how it feels like our heart might break.
Sometimes That's not what we're gonna do, know, We're gonna
talk about like how really like your actual heart muscle
can break. Now, when we think of the metaphorical broken heart,
we think of being dumped maybe, um, someone a spouse, dying,
(01:04):
extreme disappointment. Um. What else the store being out of waffles? Um?
So I mean, like there are a lot of things
that you say, oh, that broke my heart. Yeah. But
normally it's just like, Oh, I'm sad, I'm gonna eat
a lot of ice creams. But in a certain subset
of people, there's a condition called broken heart syndrome, and
(01:29):
it's sort of spurred on by the same things. Uh.
If you feel extreme emotion or stress after someone died,
after you got dumped, um, even just down to the
stress of public speaking, uh, learning a new task, that
stress can literally break your heart. One old lady got
broken heart syndrome because of a surprise party for her
(01:50):
surprise birthday party, and it broke her heart. So what
we're talking about today is broken heart syndrome, which is
this thing it feels a lot like a heart attack.
And but once these doctors got in the emergency room
with these women who claimed they were having a heart
attack and bio the way it is normally women more
than men about you know, nine ones the ratio they
(02:14):
would get them and to do the test to figure out,
you know, what was going on with their heart. Um,
and they would they would look at the lab results
and they'd be like, this sounds like a heart attack,
but it doesn't look like a heart attack. This is
not showing up on the test scans like a heart
attack would, right, And the condition is actually called cardiomyopathy
and it was first described medically by Japanese doctors. And
(02:38):
these Japanese doctors were looking at the shape of these
these broken hearts, if you will, and they said, you
know what that looks a lot like and the other
doctor was like yeah, and the first doctor was like,
an octopus net Yeah, because when this happens to your heart,
you know, you have the symptoms that are heart attackle like,
(03:00):
but what's going on is your left ventricle expands. And
because these Japanese doctors were the first to see it,
they got to name it after this octopus phishing device
like a pot or a base or a net um.
So they originally described it in as tacu supu cardio myopathy.
That was probably not pronounced right, but basically it's sword
(03:21):
for octopus and pot. So I wanted to call this
podcast what do octopus pots and broken hearts have in common?
But that seemed like a far reach and might confuse
you guys. Yeah. Um, so, like you said, though, broken
heart syndrome as octopus heart pot is known colloquially in
the medical community happens in women far more often than men,
(03:44):
and a lot of times the women are fifty or older.
A lot of times we got we're talking about post
menopausal women, which will be key because when we talk
about why this happens, that might be a factor. But
you know, they'd get the women in there, and these
women had no prior history of heart heart problems or
heart disease that all they can find is this enlarge
left ventricle and there are no blockages in the artery
(04:06):
because a normal heart attack is caused by those blockages
in the artery. That's what hurts the heart. But what
happened in two thousand five, there's this pretty landmark studying
the New England Journal in Medicine from Johns Hopkins, and
they looked at these these women who would come in
complaining of this heart problem without the clot showing up
on the test, with these left ventricles, and what they
realized is these women had much higher than normal levels
(04:29):
of stress hormones in their blood. Yeah, and and that's
why doctor Scott Sharkey, who's a cardiologist who studied this
um he refers to broken heart syndrome as more of
a concussion of the heart, like something that is just
triggered by almost like blunt trauma, if you will, sting
the heart. Yes, stunning of the heart, but as opposed
(04:51):
to a heart attack, which obviously takes a while to recover.
A lot of these people were almost over halfway back
to normal within forty to seventy two hours. Yeah, you can.
You can die from it. To answer the question of
our of our episode, very literally, some people have died
from this, uh, stunning of the heart. But they the
reason that it's gotten so much awareness lately. As some
(05:13):
of these Johns Hopkins doctors want patients to know that
just because you're going in with symptoms of a heart
attack doesn't mean it may be a heart attack, and
it doesn't mean you need to be on heart medication
for the rest of your life. You need to be
sure that you tell your doctor if anything really stressful,
like a broken heart, that you know, the kind of
stuff that that you would describe as breaking your heart,
you need to tell them that things like that have happened.
(05:35):
Don't ignore any possible emotional factors that could have been
triggering all this stress. And it can be something as
simple as they said. One lady just got stress over
trying to learn new computer software. Um. But then we
also associate this, like we said, with a broken heart,
with one spouse dying and the other just taking it
so hard that they have heart problems as well. Right.
(05:56):
And although this is referred to as broken heart syndrome
because I mean, can you think of a catchier medical condition.
I mean, that's just asking for news coverage. But I
think that, uh, this data has shown that that really
only happens in terms of like it being a result
of extreme emotional trauma, you know, the widowing or the
(06:17):
breakup or what have you, only happens in about of
the cases. And the thing is your heart can break
not once but twice. Molly, that's even even sadder. Uh.
And in ten percent of ten percent of the time
this will happen again. So in ten percent it can
happen again. Um, but you know you are in control.
That's another message that people that doctors want people are
(06:39):
just sort of take away from the publicizing of this
condition is that if you are under a lot of
emotional stress, if someone did die, if you are just
freaked out about learning this new computer software, find ways
to manage that stress. Don't just you know, hold it
all inside. Um. There are times when just the shock
of the stress is gonna just throw you into you know,
a stunt situation perhaps, But when you know that you're
(07:01):
dealing with things like this, some people do deal with
it better than others. Those people tend to do things
like eat well, exercise, sleep well. And they don't know yet.
To get back to what Kristen was talking about with
this post menopausal women, they don't know yet exactly what
could cause those high stressed levels in some people and
not others. It's possible that after a severe stressful incident,
(07:22):
these women just don't take as good care of themselves
and you know, weakens their immune system, or as possible
that because these women have gone through menopause, there might
be something with estrogen levels that are causing this to
happen in some people but not others. Right. But um,
of course there are outliers, as there are most always
with with health conditions. Um, because while the median age
(07:43):
is sixty three for this to happen, it's happened to
you or seven year old, it's happened to a thirty
two year old, and it can happen to you well
they're saying, you know, doctors may not know how to
diagnose it, which is one of the key reasons you
need to tell your doctor if something really stressful. It's happened.
It's only been since that New England Journal of Medicine
article has come out that you know. You know, one
of the doctors was talking about presenting it at a
(08:05):
conference and afterwards all these doctors came up to him
and was like, yeah, I think I saw that and
just didn't know at the time, because you know, if
it if you know, if it quacks like a duck
and it walks like a duck, you think it's a duck.
But this looks like a heart attack and isn't a
heart attack. It doesn't quack like a heart attack. It doesn't.
I mean, it may feel like a heart attack to you,
but there are different ways you can recover from it.
(08:27):
I mean, the treatment will pretty much be the same
until they figure out that it's not a heart attack,
and you may save yourself a lot of unnecessary surgery
or medications if you know it's not a heart attack.
But Molly, it's It's really good though that we are
talking about this when we are, because we are knee
deep in broken heart season. That's true. I didn't think
(08:50):
about that. And do you realize Molly, watch out, tell me,
tell us all about the broken heart season? Well, obvio
would think you would think could be like right after
Valentine's Day, whenever, right before wheneverone breaks up so they
don't have to be together on Valentine's Day. It's not
that is. I don't know how that is. I survived
this year. Now, as doctors have been looking into this more,
(09:12):
I mean, if we think about it, the first instances
where happened in what now we're in two thousand ten,
and so they're actually starting to draw some you know,
some correlations between things. And they have found that a
majority of broken heart syndrome cases occur during the spring
and summer months, and that's the complete opposite of a
(09:32):
seasonal timing of heart attacks, which tend to occur during
the winter months, which makes them wonder even more, you know,
what actually happens with his broken heart syndrome. It can't
just be because your heart muscles weekend like it is
during um a heart attack. So there's still more to
come on this. There are a lot of unknowns, but
it's pretty interesting, And as you said, it's it's begging
(09:54):
for press coverage because how many times have you said,
I could just just die he broke up me, I
could just die. I've never said that, actually, now that
I think about it, that's right, Molly, because you won't die.
You won't die buck up unless you're in a certain
percentage of post metal puzzle women. But the thing is,
I think it's worth um closing things out though, with
the fact that similar types of health conditions can occur
(10:18):
to men, because while broken heart syndrome happens a lot
to women, older women, and we associate with, you know,
like their husband dying suddenly or something like that. We
there is another thing called the widow effect widowhood effect
um that has been noted by researcher Nicholas A. Christakis,
who has tracked and like huge studies on tracking um
(10:41):
social contagions such as whether or not happiness is contagious
and also kind of on the morbid side of things,
whether or not death can be contagious. So he has
done a lot of research on this topic. Will take
the morbid side of that equation that you were just
talking about, Kristen. Sometimes you'll see in obituaries, you'll see
where a woman died, and you know, the newspaper might
(11:02):
remark that this was only a few weeks after her
husband died, and so she and Kristakis wanted to get
to the root of this kind of issue. You know,
does the remaining spouse just give up on life and
want to be with the person they're married to for
all these years? Do they take do they not take
as good care of themselves? Do they stop seeing the doctor?
Why would such a thing happen? And so he's done.
If you were a few studies kind of tracking different variables,
(11:26):
and one of the ones that was most interesting to
me was that your spouse is cause of death might
have an effect on whether you then will die shortly thereafter, right,
because while he did find that mortality after widowhood does
go up for husbands and wives, Essentially, if your wife dies,
(11:47):
it's associated with an eighteen percent increase in across the
board mortality for their husbands their widows um and then
if the husband dies, then there's a sixteen percent increase
and the wife following in suit. But it isn't the
same across the board for every type of illness. It
(12:08):
depends kind of those Those numbers will fluctuate depending on
the the spouse's cause of death. So, for instance, let's
talk about cancer. Just to take things down another notch um,
there was a statistically significant effect of widowhood on cancer
mortality mortality for older people, especially with colon and lung cancer.
(12:30):
So basically, if say a husband dies from colon or
lung cancer, there is a decent chance that the wife
will follow in suit. However, for um rarer types of
cancer such as cancer the head, neck, upper gas, for
intentional track, liver, central nervous system, pancreas, etcetera. Uh, those
(12:52):
chances go down. And what was funny was this study
found that there are more diseases that will affect man's
mortality rate than a woman's, which is kind of contradictory
to this broken heart syndrome, which does affect women more
often than men. So it's I mean, there's really no
conclusion to make. It was just sort of an interesting
(13:13):
interesting thing to note, all right, Molly. So now that
I am a little scared of stressing myself out too
much this summer because I might die in the high
season of broken heart syndrome, and I'm never getting married
so that I can't die right after a spouse. That's
a good way to plan in your life. I think
(13:33):
we should end things on a high note, and mentioned
that while it is probably pretty pretty well covered in
the media and you might have heard of it before,
there's a very slim chance that's going to happen to you.
It's the broken heart syndrome. The broken heart syndrome. Yes,
um data suggests that only about twelve thousand Americans might
(13:56):
have it in any given year. And yeah, that's twelve
thousand of marreor Ppkins, and that's you know, a lot
of people if you put them all in one room together.
But it probably won't be you. But that doesn't have
to stop you from writing a great song about your
broken heart and sending it to us, because where would
the music industry be without the idea of the broken heart? Nowhere? Nowhere.
(14:18):
And on that note, let's read some incredibly dramatic emails,
all right, I have one that's not signed. It's about
the boob Politics podcast listener writes, I was surprised that
you barely touched on the French Revolution. I'm a huge
fan Napoleon, and when I was reading a biography of
his wife, Josephine. It talked at length about how there
(14:38):
was an entire period of the Revolution after where higher
classes would wear gauzy toka like dresses that often left
one breast completely out in the open while the other
was lightly wrapped in a sea through fabric. Also on
the subject of big boobs and professionalism, I find the
standards reversed in my specific profession. I'm one of my
school's three news anchors, and the bustiest of us at
(14:59):
a robust thirty are deep. My fellow anchors, and I
get more comments from people around school, mostly guys, about
what was on the news when we're showing more cleavage.
I hate to think of using boops to get other
students to pay attention to the news, but if it works,
dot dot dot All right, well, I have one here
from Rick about food politics as well, and he says,
(15:23):
I think the most diserving thing about how young women
are using the hard one personal expressive freedom rested for
them by first and second wave women livers is expressed
by their choosing the easy, slutty grunge garb over more
meaningful accomplishments now open to them In academics and the
professional work world. Maybe it's always been this way, but
(15:44):
what a shame people are like we are. I guess
I expect too much from evolution, and so does my wife,
who was married a man with chronic man steridis. Sunglasses
help interesting Alright, we got one from Ken that will
close out because it's a question I think that everyone
can help answer. This is on the episode about the
(16:05):
history of the bikini, and he writes that podcast was
both informative entertaining, but I think you left at one
very important question, which is the sexier a one piece
or two? While popular culture seems to depict the two
piece as the hands down winner, I'd be curious of
pulling data showed the same, and if these differences were
the same among men and women. I've always perceived the
two pieces to revealing, thus taking away from a woman's
(16:27):
potential sexiness. Not seeing everything exposed often stimulates more imagination intrigue,
and the one piece accentuates the natural curves and beauty
of a woman's figure. Was the one piece not partly
to blame for the success of Baywatch? Had the actors
all been wearing bikinis, it just would have been the same.
I'm just wondering if this is the broader view or
if my take is skewed. So there's a question for everyone,
(16:50):
which do you like more? Yeah? One or two? One
or two? Well, and for all your good questions. You
know where to send him mom Stuff at how stuff
works dot com and dear in the week, you should
follow me and Molly on Twitter it's a mom stuff podcast,
and then on Facebook we are stuff Mom Never Told You.
And as always, you can head over to our blog
(17:11):
during the week if you'd like a little lecture reading material.
It's our blog stuff Mom Never Told You, and it's
at how stuff works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works
dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our
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(17:35):
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