The expression "scared to death" sounds like a figurative, but it does happen - both with people and with animals.
Death rates from heart attacks rise during earthquakes, financial crises and civil unrest. Also during football matches - in stoppage time. And while watching horror movies.
The body is so arranged that it can literally "turn off" from fright.
How does this happen
The heart is a collection of tubes surrounded by muscles. Muscles support and compress the tubes. The blood passing through the tubes presses on them from the inside. Muscles press outside.
Doctors from Japan drew attention to the fact that young and generally healthy people who, for whatever reason, are constantly under stress, are often treated with symptoms of a heart attack.
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After a thorough examination of the heart of one of the patients, doctors discovered an oblong enlargement of one of the chambers, which they called takotsubo cardiomyopathy (takotsubo translates as "octopus trap"; approx. Mixstuff.ru).
The work of the muscles of the heart is related to the rhythm, which is maintained by the nervous system. When we are scared, our body releases stress hormones called "catecholamines", which make the heart muscles work much faster and harder than usual.
And it helps a lot - when you need to run away from a wild beast. But when absolutely nothing depends on us, only harm is from hormones, which are very toxic. Their excess leads to increased pressure on certain parts of the arteries or muscles.
In most cases, takotsubo syndrome is curable. It happens, however, that a strong violation of the rhythm leads to death. Sometimes the ventricle really
bursting. Therefore, this phenomenon is popularly called "broken heart syndrome"
But heart failure is not all the evil that stress causes to the body. Catecholamines literally "pierce" all the muscles of the body, especially skeletal muscles - those that are connected to the skeletal system. As these muscles break down, their decay products enter the bloodstream, and from there into the kidneys. In the end, the kidneys cease to cope, the body becomes poisoned, and there it is not far from death. Scientifically, this process is called rhabdomyolysis or acute skeletal muscle necrosis. It can develop very quickly, but most often it lasts a long time, accompanied by continuous muscle tension and neurasthenia.
Death trap
The existence of death from fear has long been well known to veterinarians. They have always had to deal with the sudden deaths of wild-caught animals. They simply called this phenomenon differently - "seizure myopathy."
From one to ten percent of captive animals die from this syndrome. To reduce the risk, humans have learned over time to avoid being chased, avoid unnecessary noise, and give the captured animals some room to move. In addition, they noticed that in order to prolong the life of the animal, one should avoid looking it directly in the eyes.
And when keeping the surviving animals during the capture, care must be taken to ensure that the risk of a stressful situation has been minimized. Zoo workers know that it is best to keep animals in spacious enclosures and provide them with a place where they can always hide from the eyes of visitors.
It is also extremely important to reduce the noise level as much as possible. In one zoo, a giraffe died due to the fact that an opera was performed in an open area nearby. Employees of another zoo realized that animals also have psychological incompatibility, only when several zebras could not stand being in the same enclosure with an African buffalo and died.
A person, just like an animal, can suddenly die from stress - only the situations are different. Emotions of a person make his body react to a financial crisis, the death of a loved one, troubles at school or at work in the same way as the body of a zebra - to the need to constantly see a large scary animal in front of him. We, like all animals, can feel trapped and caged with no hope of escape.
If the stressful situation is not weakened, then the body at some point simply turns off. That is, a person can literally be scared to death.
Lina Skok