How love affects your heart

Love is and remains a "matter of the heart", as shown by phrases such as "I love you with all my heart" or "I have lost my heart to someone". The heart is also connected with life force, as it reacts strongly to emotions and thus also to hormones - including happiness hormones, but also stress hormones.

Being in love releases the happiness hormone phenethylamine, which makes the heart beat faster. However, the opposite effect can also occur when one loses a loved one. In this case, the stress hormone adrenaline is usually released, which leads to an acceleration of the heartbeat. If these symptoms persist, this can even lead to temporary heart failure - the so-called broken heart syndrome. The high level of stress hormones causes the left ventricle of the neck to cramp, making it resemble a jar-shaped Japanese squid trap - the Tako Tsubo. This is why this disease is also called Takotsubo syndrome.

However, researchers have now discovered that strong, positive emotions can also lead to this syndrome - in this case it is called happy heart syndrome.  It is reassuring to know, however, that this phenomenon is fortunately an isolated case, only about 20 cases are known worldwide - the risk of damage to the heart due to joy seems to be lower than that of anger or fear. However, both forms of Takotsubo syndrome prove how strongly love can influence our body.

As a rule, however, love has a positive effect on health. Love and togetherness has many different effects on the body, behavior and the heart. It has been sufficiently proven that married people live significantly longer, need to see a doctor less often and hospital stays are also shorter. Happily married spouses also have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, according to cardiological studies in the US1 and the UK2. The reason for this is believed to be that spouses encourage each other to eat a healthy diet, have check-ups and visit a doctor in good time - especially if symptoms are unclear.

You can find out how to use CardioSecur Active when your symptoms are unclear here.