Losing a loved one can have a significant impact on both mental and physical health. The University of Arizona studied the effects of grief on heart function and found that severe grief can cause a significant increase in blood pressure. According to the data, grief can be a risk factor for cardiovascular events.
The study, published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Medicine, demonstrated a correlation between grief severity and elevated systolic blood pressure response. The idea of ”dying of a broken heart,” which can happen after the loss of a loved one, was the impetus for the study, said Mary-Frances O’Connor, senior author of the study and associate professor of psychology at U-Arizona. Expert in grief.
Epidemiological studies have long documented the increased risk of death following the death of a loved one. Research by O’Connor and his colleagues looked at blood pressure as a possible contributing factor. The study included 59 participants who had lost a close loved one in the past year.
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“We were looking for a way to examine the cardiovascular effects of grief during that vulnerable time in the first year after the loss,” said study lead author Roman Palitsky, who was a doctoral student at U-Arizona when the study was conducted and is now director of the Spiritual Health Research Project at Emory University’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center.
Participants in the study were interviewed and asked to focus on feelings of separation and attachment through a process the researchers called “grief recall.” The researchers spoke with each participant for 10 minutes and asked them to share a moment when they felt very alone after the death of a loved one. The researchers then measured the blood pressure of the study participants.
“When you go to a cardiologist, they don’t just measure your blood pressure. They sometimes do a stress test like a treadmill and measure your blood pressure. It’s like a stress test,” says O’Connor.
After the grief recall, participants’ systolic blood pressure — the pressure the heart’s arteries exert when it beats — increased. From baseline levels, systolic blood pressure rose by an average of 21.1 millimeters of mercury—the unit used to measure blood pressure. This is about the same amount of increase as expected during moderate exercise.
Among the 59 participants, those who showed the highest levels of grief symptoms experienced the greatest increase in blood pressure during grief withdrawal.
“This means that it’s not just the death of a loved one that affects the heart, but our emotional response to the loss that is affecting our heart,” O’Connor said. The study’s findings are helpful for clinicians, as they show that people experiencing grief are at higher risk for high blood pressure and other heart-related problems, O’Connor said.
“It is important for psychologists and therapists to encourage grieving clients to get their regular medical checkups. Often, when we care for a loved one who is dying, we neglect our own health care,” she said.
In his grief, loss and social stress lab in the psychology department, O’Connor studied an intervention called “progressive muscle relaxation.” It teaches grieving people to tense major muscle groups in their body and then relax completely.
Such body-based interventions can be helpful for people in terms of their grief and in reducing their stress levels, O’Connor says. “I continue to look for interventions that will help address the physical and medical aspects of grief in addition to the emotional aspects,” she said.
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