The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. – Albert Einstein




Friday, January 30, 2015

ARR # 3 Period 3

Can people die of a broken heart? Check this out! In the space below, leave a comment. You should react to the article AS WELL AS your classmates' comments. Feel free to pose questions that will invigorate the conversation.

15 comments:

  1. Personally, I believe that people can die of a broken heart. I think it is the stress and sudden emotional damage the breaks them down. A very distant aunt of mine died of a heart attack and when her sister found out, she too died of a heart attack the day she found out. I think it's crazy but agree with the science of it all and that many things contribute to death from broken heart syndrome.

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  2. I agree with Shakeith, and I think that it is definitely possible for someone to die due to a broken heart. This article is not the first time that I have heard of someone experiencing health problems soon after loosing a loved one or a spouse. I actually have a very similar personal experience to Shakeith about my relatives. As crazy or odd as it may sound, my great aunt died not even a month after her husband passed away. She started experiencing chest pains and eventually her heart just stopped. I think that loosing someone that you love so much is a very hard thing to handle, especially as you get older. I think that if enough stress is put on someone, it can kill them. It is really crazy to think that this can happen, but it obviously is a very common thing.

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  3. I agree with Hope and Shakeith. I think people can die of a broken heart because some people who lose a loved one feel like they have nothing left to live for. Believe it or not the mind is a powerful thing and when people feel sad and lonely over the course of a long period of time it starts to take a toll on their health. Dorothy Lee started to get chest pains after her husband died. Also, there was a sweet old couple that used to live next door to me and when one of them died the other went shortly after. Stress is terrible for someone's health it can have life threatening affects. Stress and depression can build up inside a person and eventually kill them.

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  4. Like everyone above, I totally agree that it is possible to die from a broken. Without even reading the article, one can assume why this would be so. When our bodies are put under so much stress, they sometimes cannot handle it. If someone you love has suddenly died, that's going to put you in a very terrible emotional state. This happens quite often in the non-human world as well. In animal shelters, when animals have grown up together for so long they cannot be separated. The amount of stress would cause them to die. This actually happened to my aunt's two dogs. Bonnie and Clyde were brother and sister. When Clyde unexpectedly died, Bonnie was slowly dying due to so much stress of not being with her brother. It's a beautifully tragic death. The fact that the relationships we form with others can influence our minds to just shut down our bodies is insane. It makes me feel as if I'm not really control.

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  5. I also agree with every one above and think it is possible for someone to die from a broken heart. I agree wit what Hope's comment about how stress and depression can overcome ones mind and kill them. Loosing somebody you spent a lot of time with is very difficult and to manage living without them can be impossible for someone. When this happens, people can become mentally unstable causing them to not be able to function.

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  6. I agree with everyone else that dying of a broken heart is a legitimate cause of death. I'm curious if there is more research out there on these patients' specifics to see if there is any conclusive conclusions as to what triggers these chest pains and an eventual heart attack and why it affects certain people (and women more). Is it just overall stress and sadness or is there a specific reason for this response? Shane said this makes him feel like he's not in complete control, I hadn't thought about it like that before but I agree, It's sad that subconsciously we can become so attached to someone to the point where we're dependent on them to function. Fortunately, two people dying in such a short amount of time has not happened in my family, which makes me wonder if this could be more likely in certain families (and have ties to genetics).

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  7. Ms. O'Hern claims that Woodrow Wilson died of a broken heart after failing to establish a League of Nations after WW1. I agree that one could die of a broken heart because Wilson suffered from heart problems and depression linked to his failed attempt at securing democracy in Europe. Anyway, the science behind dying of a broken heart is definitely believable as someone who has lost a loved one in such short notice may feel stressed about life without them or regrets that they wish they could have reversed before that person died. Depression is an emotion and linked to the heart therefore the extreme mourning of a loved one's death could cause heart problems. I agree with Shane that torn relationships can lead to an early death due to the stress and depression.

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    1. I agree with Declan and Shane that the stress and depression may cause a person to die of a broken heart. The human body is not accustomed to being under large amounts of stress over large periods of time, so there is a possibility that these uncomfortable conditions the body is under could cause it to give out. Dying of a broken heart is possible and a legitimate cause of death.

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  8. Declan, Woodrow Wilson did not die of a broken heart he died of a stroke. Also, he had it still campaigning for the league of nations to be passed so he did not know that it was going to get denied yet. I mean i do agree that it was weird for Ms. Lee to experience pains after losing her husband, but it is going to hurt when you lose someone that you have been with for so long. I think that Ms. Lee is not heart broken, but instead just missing her husband.

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  9. I agree with everyone else in the idea that someone can die of a broken heart. Stings of rejection or loss don't reside solely in the mind but literally travels throughout the body. Physical discomfort and inflammatory stress are caused, as a result, which can lead to health issues that aren't necessarily issues but heart-muscle deficiency. Hormonal stress is tough to deal with. I remember my uncle had a "near death" experience when my great grandmother died, a few years back. It crushed him and he honestly had troubles due to how torn he was. As Shane said, it's insane to even see that there's an direct link to the mind and the body shutting down because of heart ache.

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  10. I think one can die of a broken heart because if you think about it scientifically, extreme stress can cause problems with your heart and other parts of your body. So if someone you loved dearly just died that causes you to feel extreme sadness (and sometimes depression) which is also very stressful on the body. This could also explain why people are usually more sluggish when they are mourning because 1) they don’t want to do anything 2) they’re tired all the time and 3) this could be from the heart having to work over time through all the heavy stress that was put on the body. Unscientifically speaking being able to die of a broken heart goes into the idea of where does our consciousness come from and do people have souls and when someone extremely close to them dies a part of them is literally missing. But people have their own theories about that and whether or not they believe in that, so you can see it both ways.

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  11. I want to disagree with everyone who says that people can die from a broken heart. Although after many people lose a loved one or someone close to them, there can be many effects that follow behind such as, stress, high blood pressure etc. However, if people die because they lost a loved one it's simply because they were not in a healthy state, not directly dying from a broken heart. I understand what everyone was saying about people dying from a broken heart but I think the real question that Ms. Coffin is trying to reveal here is Can an individual physically die from a broken heart?

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  12. I’m still skeptical whether people can actually die from a broken heart. However I do believe it is possible. I think it’s more on based when someone’s heart has been broken. What if before someone was already stressed while they were in a long relationship and more stress has added on after the heart break? Maybe just maybe it’s just added stress and depression that can kill you. Instead it is just better to not say the cause is a broken heart itself.

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  13. I want to relate back to Ms.Coffin's question and Courtnee's statement. I agree with Courtnee when she says that there are actually many affects like high blood pressure from stress and may be other porblems that the person many have had before after the supposed "condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or broken heart syndrome" are what actually cause the spouse or lover to die soon or not soon after their better half. not the actual broken heart

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  14. Knowing that people can actually die of a broken heart is quite intriguing to me. Siftinf through other people's comments, it seems as though everyone is on the same track. In the article, the case of an older woman, Dorothy, is mentioned. There seems to be a correlatio with broken hearts and older folk. I always think about The Notebook when it comes to this topic. It is actually quite scary that a broken heart has related health defects. All in all, the broken heart is a scenario that is quite saddening to me.

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