09/14/2026
The Heart Doesn’t Know It’s a Metaphor:
Takotsubo syndrome, sometimes called “broken heart syndrome,” can follow acute grief or shock. The left ventricle balloons and fails. Chest pain, an abnormal ECG, rising cardiac enzymes — every sign can read like a heart attack, even while the coronary arteries remain open.
It accounts for about one in ten women presenting with acute coronary syndrome.
On August 31, researchers reporting in the European Heart Journal described something remarkable: grief leaves a protein signature in the blood distinct from the one myocardial infarction leaves.
One of those proteins, PAM, sits on the brain-heart axis and activates neuropeptides involved in the stress response.
We have spent a long time talking about grief as something psychological. But the division between what happens in the mind and what happens in the body has never been as tidy as our medical categories suggest.
The pathway is anatomical, not poetic.
Today’s Action: Name the load.
Write one sentence naming what your body is metabolizing that you have not said out loud.
You do not have to solve it today.
Say it once, to a person or to paper.
— Gary E. Foresman, MD
