You Asked: Can a Breakup Make You Sick?

Love hurts, but a breakup can be agony—even beyond the emotional pain. If you’ve gone through a highly emotional split, researchers say your immune system can take a significant hit. “Breaking up with a partner leaves people feeling blue and lonely, even when it’s something they wanted,” says Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University. “Time heals wounds, and people recover, but the time course for recovery is related to how much a person continues to be preoccupied with thoughts of their former partner.” In her research, Kiecolt-Glaser has found this preoccupation with a lost love can take the form of pining or rage, but in either case, those thoughts are linked with feelings of loneliness, depression and—believe it or not—poorer immune function. Stress hormones are a likely culprit. Your immune system’s cells contain receptors that react to many different hormones, including some related to stress, depression and other breakup-induced emotional responses, she explains. If the fallout from a breakup keeps your stress hormones elevated for weeks or even months, that can lead to inflammation—as well as shifts in your gut microbiome—that could in turn lower your body’s defenses against illness-causing pathogens. Those shifts may also exacerbate feelings of pain associated with existing conditions like arthri...
Source: TIME.com: Top Science and Health Stories - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized break up Breakup Divorce ex boyfriend ex-girlfriend how to get over a breakup how to get over someone how to recover from a breakup immune system Love Relationship relationship advice relationships Sex/Relationshi Source Type: news