You Can Actually Die From Grief

Just hours after her daughter, Carrie Fisher, died of a heart attack on Dec. 27, actress Debbie Reynolds reportedly suffered a fatal stroke at the age of 84. “She’s now with Carrie, and we’re all heartbroken,” Reynolds’ son, Todd Fisher, said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, according to the Associated Press. The stress of his sister’s death “was too much” for his mother, Fisher said. While it’s impossible to say whether or not acute distress contributed to Reynolds’ death, it’s medically possible for stressful life events to trigger fatal health outcomes. “Grief is a highly personal experience,” Dr. Jose Biller, professor and chairman of the stroke center at Loyola University Chicago and a spokesman for the American Stroke and Heart Associations, told The Huffington Post.  Grief over the death of a significant person has been associated with an immediate increased risk of cardiovascular ailments, Biller explained. Indeed, there’s significant research on what’s known as the “widowhood effect,” where the death of a spouse increases the living partner’s chances of dying. Take, for instance, a 2014 matched cohort study published in JAMA Internal Medicine, which compared older adults between the ages of 60 and 89 from a U.K. primary database who experienced the death of their partner to those who didn’t, between 2005 and 2012.  The resea...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news