Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Broken Heart Syndrome

Episode Date: March 22, 2019

This week on Sawbones to celebrate the Maximum Fun Drive we've got a special crossover episode with Shmanners! Let's talk about broken heart syndrome (which is exactly what we'll have if you don't donate!) DONATE NOW! Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Sawbones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, talk is about books. One, two, one, two, three, four. We came across a pharmacy with a toy and that's lost it out. We saw through the broken glass and had ourselves hot like a round.

Some medicines, some medicines that escalate my cop for the mouth. Wow. Hello everybody and welcome to Sobhones, I'm able to have Miss Guy to Medicine. I'm your co-host Justin McAroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. And this is Sid, I think is where to say a very special episode of The Bones. The Bones, no. I've been thinking about calling it The Bones.

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I mean, like you're not, you realize you're not like losing any syllables. Yeah. By saying the bones, it's a max fun drive. It is the 2019 max fun drive. The time that we come to you once a year and say, Hey, you've enjoyed what you've heard in our show. Please consider supporting it financially. Once a year and say, Hey, you've enjoyed what you've heard in our show. Please consider supporting it financially.

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I just saw him. No. No. Such a disappointment, Dax. That I love Dax. Disappointment, Dax. Why? Very disappointed.

Don't elevate anti-science loans. No. Also, if you work for Delta. If you work for Delta, you have a good podcast. Yeah, you have a selection of podcasts that people can listen to. And some are quite good, like Dr. Death is on there. Some are quite good. But then also Goop is on there.

How long are you spreading that misinformation, that anti-science junk on your planes? This is a cross. We're so bad at pledge drive episodes. We just get angry and start complaining about anti-science people. Anyway, anyway, this is a crossover episode with Schmanners, a podcast about etiquette created by Teresa McRoy and her husband Trevor or something. Trevor or something. And we are talking this week about heartbreak. Why? Well, if you listen to our show and don't donate, it breaks our heart. Is that your... That's the right thing.

That's what I'm going with. That's your thing. Also, Travis texted us and said, hey, this is what we want to do. And I said, ah, that would be a good episode. It's all about us, too. And good idea. And also, it breaks our heart when you don't donate. Well, you don't have my theme. Okay.

I'm a theme. You had a look on your face like, I know this is dumb, but I'm going to try to go with it. I've never had that look on my face my entire life. Oh, that look is on your face like 50% of the time we're recording. Sydney, unless I am confused, I don't think having a broken heart is a medical condition, right? Well, actually Justin, there is something called broken heart syndrome. I'm not going to answer that question directly because like your heart isn't, I don't know, like it didn't visit, like it's not broken in half, the way that we picture a broken heart. Yeah, you could almost say that I was trying to open a door for you,

say introduce the topic and discuss it rather than correct specifically. Did you see I put a clip from the Wizard of Oz in the notes? Because it's across everyone's Travis and Teresa and Teresa loves the Wizard of Oz. Oh, that's nice. You can read it if you want. I'm opening it as we speak. Oh, you don't have the notes? I was so mad about that.

That's for your pledge break. I was so mad about that. Hearts will never be made practical until they are made unbreakable. I was, yeah. Now, if enough force, first you have to freeze it a heart like sub-zero. And then a one punch, I imagine, can shatter a heart once you're in that state. Is that what we're discussing today? No, that is not what we're discussing.

You've heard the phrase that someone died of a broken heart. Yeah. Most of the time, that's more of a euphemistic kind of thing. They didn't literally have some sort of cardiac event that led to their death, but could you conceivably die of a broken heart? Science says, yes. And we're going to talk about that.

OK. Now, before I get into what the actual cardiac syndrome that is sometimes colloquially colloquially colloquially. Colloquially. I hate saying that word. It's a hard one. It's a hard one. Colloquially. Colloquially. You said like Dr. Zwayne Berger.

Colloquially. Colloquially. Anyway, that, um, in layman's terms, it's sometimes called broken heart syndrome. Before we get into that, uh, we've had ancient remedies. A lot of them like herbal or folk remedies for a broken heart,

things that you supposedly could do to get, to help you get through a broken heart, which I think is interesting that we tried to come up with substances to, I mean, I, you know, it can feel like, like any kind of intense emotional thing, broken heart, which I think is interesting that we tried to come up with substances to heal. I mean, it can feel like any kind of intense emotional thing like that can feel physical, right? Like, I could say you would think that it would be, you know, you get the pit of your

stomach, ache, and the, you know, the feeling like crap all over your body flew like nothing. Yeah, but, uh, third Ghargy. But these remedies are aimed specifically at getting through the broken heart. So, I mean, like, it's with a knowledge that it's not a necessarily physical in origin, that it is an emotional thing. Which I guess maybe they are sort of overtures

like old without knowing overtures that are trying to help with maybe mental illness or maybe just what we would call more like a grief reaction, that kind of thing. And some of that can be like a normal grief reaction. It's not necessarily pathologic. If something bad happens, you should feel sad and cry. That's normal.

But anyway, some of these have been like a bomb of gilliad buds are popular. Sounds romantic. You hold them close to your heart. You can put them under your pillow. I don't know what that would do, but it's sound I mean, it does. Maybe like like a dumb O and feather kind of thing. Yeah, sure. You could carry around some dried amaranth. That's been known. One of my favorite was drink a wine glass of tomato juice three times a day.

I mean, it sounds healthy. Not for me, like the reflux from that. Yeah, that would give you a heart, I think you from broken heart to heartburn. I think there you go. It's not helping anything. Proud of that one. I'm 50-50. Honestly.

There's some herbs like a cycloman was one I found that will like, a cycloman notorious doctor who, me, cycloman. That will both heal your broken heart and protect you from evil. But there you go. There you go. It works on the cycloman. Not weed, hold not weed. But there you go. There you go. Works on the cycling. Not weed, hold not weed. No, pass.

The hand. Anything is not weed, no way. Cause not weed. Cannot weed. Like Cannot weed. Like Cannuffle Bunny. Cannot weed. So you hold it in the hand you're right with

and it absorbs all your pain. You have to imagine that, though. You have to imagine that a lot of the most effective mental care is required. Imagine imagining the more things. And then this was my favorite pomegranate. Cut a pomegranate in half right your first name on a piece of clean white paper, fold it, place it between the two halves, tie it back together and bury it. How like a kudiketch, same principle? That is not how a kudiketch or work. I know, it's not, it's, it was literary, I took literary license.

Yeah. And I mean, if any of these sort of like rituals make you feel better, I don't find, other than like drinking tomato juice, they're not intrinsically harmful, I suppose. Sometimes some sort of like ceremonial letting go of emotions is important. We're in weird territory, right? Because normally we wouldn't be giving this much of a pass to like stuff that like just doesn't work, but we're in like, right now, we're actually talking about an emotional state, right? This is a, I mean, this is the crossover.

Like for a long time, a broken heart is just, I mean, it's just that, right? It's an emotional thing that happened. It's not a medical condition of any stripe necessarily. I mean, a lot of people go through heartbreak and don't necessarily need any sort of medical help. I'm not gonna say that that's impossible you would. But most of the time you don't. And so these are just sort of like I don't know. I mean, it's like it their ancient equivalents to eat some ice cream and hang out with your friends.

Right? Like it's the same idea. Right. They're just it's just if you don't have friends, but you do have a lot of tomatoes. And you don't have ice cream I guess yeah, I found a broken heart tea recipe delicious. Yeah, I like that idea Here's some tea that will fix your broken heart it has rose hips and basil and bird-o-cruise Holy basil And something that I assume they sell I'm not gonna give them any it's another it's a Yeah, I'm not gonna to give them any. It's another. It's not fun.

Yeah, I'm not going to give them a plug. But there is some sort of a little additive that they sell and then some sugar. The recipe doesn't say sugar. It says raw sugar or raw honey. So that kind of tells you what kind of recipe we're talking about. So there's some tea that will I and here's the thing. I think that if we're if we're talking about the emotional thing, whatever as long as it doesn't as long as not harmful and you're not losing any money on it, I mean, go for whatever you feel

like. I would have, I would have, advocate though if you're going to buy a pomegranate, like eat it, they're expensive. Yeah, the tea, the tea thing sounds like it could help. Man, just like sitting with a cup of tea, just like enjoying some tea, that sounds like it could actually be very useful for broken heart. Sure. Whatever tea.

A metaphorical broken heart. A metaphorical. Not a sub-zero shattered broken heart. There's very little that's done for that. But can you actually get sick from a broken heart? Can you actually have a medical condition that is called a broken heart? Yes. I'm asking you, oh, thank you for answering before you wait until the next day.

It's a rhetorical. Yes. I asked you, oh, thank you for answering before you wait. It's a tour call. Yes. I figured. This is not an old diagnosis. Most of the things we talk about on the show are very ancient. But and certainly this could have been happening for hundreds of. One would have seen it. Right. But we didn't know. Especially since people back in the old days beefed it constantly. It was probably happening even more. But we didn't know that it was a distinct entity until the 90s. In 1991, there was a paper published in Japan.

There were some researchers who detailed what was called Takasubo's cardiomyopathy. So basically, someone will have some sort of extreme emotional stressful event. Something will happen to them or around them. And as a result, or some physical stress, it doesn't have to be emotional. It could be physical stress. But emotional is what I think captured the public's imagination. Because it could also be a physical stress, something like a severe sepsis. You got a really bad infection. And so now your heart is under a physical stress. You know what I mean?

So like, I think romantic about that notion. No, like, I mean, I don't think it's a big leap to think if you're very sick, it could tax your heart more. I think that's kind of obvious. Or like a trauma, like a I think that's kind of obvious or like a trauma, like a physical trauma, that kind of thing. But emotional trauma was a little more interesting. And patients would come to the emergency room and it would sound like they were having a heart attack. They were presenting with the symptoms of a heart attack. I'm

having chest pain, I'm having shortness of breath. I feel dizzy, I feel nauseous, I'm sweaty. Just the usual stuff that when we hear we go, oh, could be a heart attack, let's do the heart attack stuff, the things we do, the labs we do, the tests we do. Let's figure out if this is a heart attack. And they will have somebody asked this recently, what's the difference between symptoms and signs? Symptoms are things that you the patient tell me,

like I'm dizzy, I'm sweaty, you know, that kind of thing, although sweating could be assigned to. Signs are things I observe. So, like, you're not going to tell me that you're tachycardic. Right. You would observe that. I would observe that. But you're going to tell me that you have chest pain.

I don't know. That's a little alien. So, anyway, so we would also find diagnostic indications that a patient could be having a heart attack. So for instance, we do an EKG electrical tracing of their heart and find some changes on it that look like a heart attack. We check for something called cardiac enzymes. Usually now it's just something called trapponin, which is like something that is in your heart

muscle and if your heart muscle is being damaged, it will get released into your bloodstream. We shouldn't find a lot of it in your bloodstream. If we do, we know there's some heart muscle damage going on. So we'll test your blood for that and we'll find it. And it all looks like a heart attack, right? So they found these patients that presented just like a heart attack. But the difference is that when they did the stuff

to figure out like, oh, where's the blockage? Because that's usually what we think is happening, right? One of the arteries that feed blood to the heart is blocked off, that's a heart attack. Because the heart muscle was then being damaged. They would do a cath, cardiac catheterization, inject die to look in the blood vessels and see where is the blockage, and they wouldn't find anything.

They wouldn't find any evidence of a blockage. And that was weird because it looked like they had one in all other, you know. And so then they started doing it. They checked, though, before they started digging around in there. Well, and that's key. And I'm gonna say this multiple times in the show,

but that is a very key point about this. Even if you, at some point in your life and hopefully you don't experience what you think might be, quote, unquote, broken heart syndrome, it's still more likely that it's a heart attack. And you should go to the ER and tell them immediately. And the ER doctor will do everything that they normally do for a heart attack, which is right and good because most of the time it's not this. So if you're thinking to yourself, God, well, my chest really hurts, but I have been really sad about the McRib going away

because I eat so many McRibs all the time constantly. It might actually still be a heart attack. Yes. I would actually, the McRibs. That was kind of mine. That was, it worked on a couple different. I followed. Maxwell, Fundado, or first I showed you. That's the thing mine. Yeah. That was, it was a couple different. I followed. Maxwell found out over first, I shouldn't eat.

That's the thing you can reward. Anyway, so they're going to do all the stuff that they would do for a heart attack, which is good. That is what we should do. That is the protocol, because most of the time it is. But in these cases, they don't find a blockage. So then they started doing on, in this particular report, they started doing echoes, echo cardiograms on these patients,

which is like an ultrasound of your heart. They put some jelly on your chest, and then they put a little ultrasound wand around, and look at your heart while it's beating. They watch it. They watch it beat. And what they found is that the hearts were doing, all these patients were doing, had a very similar appearance of their heart on the echo. It was an unusual appearance.

The left ventricle, which is the bottom part of your heart that's very mushy and squeezes the blood out to your body. It's got to be a big, tough muscle and it squeezes really hard and pumps the blood everywhere out to your body, right? Very important. This part of the heart in these patients, the bottom of it was ballooning out in a strange fashion. It was not squeezing like a big thick muscle should. It was like floppy and weak and ballooning out. And it was a very distinct appearance that they found in these hearts. So the heart wasn't squeezing like it was supposed to.

And then you would get all those symptoms that we talked about. And they started calling it Takasubos because the appearance of the heart, this is where this name comes from, I thought this was a fascinating. I assume it was someone's name. No, it is not someone's name. It is based on the appearance of the ventricle. And you'd almost have to look up a picture of this to, because I have never seen this thing.

It is named for a Japanese octopus pot. Okay. It is a kind of pot, I guess it's like a trap that you can like lower and it looks like, like from the diagrams, it looks like the octopus just swims into it. Got him. And it's a pot.

And anyway, it resembled this octopus pot. And so the name Taka Subo is octopus pot because that's the appearance of the heart on this imaging study on an echo. It looks like an octopus pot. So how did they get to the, sort of get to the bottom of the, the whole disorder? Well, I'm going to tell you about that, Justin.

Oh, yes. After our break, our break. Oh, that's right. There's no billing department. There's no billing department. This time we're just talking about the maximum fund drive, maximum fund. Or Ford slash donate is where you can go. We have a goal this year of 25,000 new and upgrading members.

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Yes, there's an ASMR episode. It was a commentary track for the series finale of two and a half men inexplicably. Yes. The last year we did a tour of a pharmacy. Oh, that's right. It's all, it's all, it's all about what medicines worked and didn't work.

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You can do that. I was still buffering bonus this year. It was really fun. It was really fun. There's all kinds of great stuff. There's videos. There's all kinds of radical content. So please, I want to close by saying thank you.

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Don't wait because you'll forget, please go right now, pledge 5, 10, $20 a month and help keep our shows going. And we really appreciate it. So Sidney, we were, we were about to, I feel like we were about to investigate a little bit. So let's, let's talk more about Takasubo's cardiomyopathy or also called stress cardiomyopathy, also called apical ballooning syndrome or stress induced cardiomyopathy. All of these are names that a lot of us in the medical world would use. You guys don't like the drama?

No, we don't like the drama. What caught people's attention from this initial report, which was only five patients. It was a pretty small report, but what captured everyone's attention was the idea that emotional stress could cause these symptoms. And so the name broken heart syndrome grew from this. Let me ask you a question, Sid. And I don't mean to derail you, but it's max wind drives. We can take a little bit longer. What differentiates this phenomenon from,

like we know that emotional stimuli can have an effect unlike, well like hypertension, for example, right, can be affected by your emotional state, right? So why is it surprising that an emotional state like heartbreak would have a physical effect since there are other emotional states that can have physical effects?

The acuity was the thing that surprised people because what we tend to think about is that high stress, like you know, an think about is that high stress, like an emotional state, a high stress, emotional state, long term is not good for you, like in a chronic sense, is not good for you. But the idea that an acute emotional event would lead to something that looked like an acute cardiac event, like a heart attack. Like the idea of being scared to death, right? Exactly.

It's the all at once thing, I think, that was really the surprising part. The idea that chronic stress causes chronic illness, I mean, this is not new. Like, we've investigated this for a long time. But there was never a belief before this that you could all at once become so sad or angry or overwhelmed or stressed or scared or frustrated or this that you could all at once become so sad or angry or overwhelmed or stressed or scared or frustrated or whatever, that you could actually have a heart attack and maybe actually die, not usually, certainly, but possibly. So, there's been a lot of research done since that initial, those initial findings in, in

91 where we've tried to figure out like how prevalent is this, has this been happening for a long time? Are we, are a lot of heart attacks that, or what looks like heart attacks really from this? Initially, the research suggested it was about 1%. There's some other studies who've argued that it might be a little higher, 2% as high as 5, but most agree that it's probably a 1 or 2% of acute heart attacks

are actually this. So not one percent of people, one percent of people who come and it looks like they have a heart attack are actually presenting with this Taka-Subozer broken heart syndrome. We also know a lot more about who is at risk for this. It turns out depending on which series you look at, 80% and 90% of patients are women. So in some of the studies, it was 100% a female problem. And then the average age is somewhere between 61 and 76. So it seems to be the most likely to have this issue or older women, but it could be men certainly and it could be younger. It was initially thought that it's always transient,

meaning that you have these symptoms, your EKG looks like this, your echo looks like this, we find these things in your bloodstream and you get really sick and then you get better and then your heart goes back to normal and then it pumps just fine. That was our initial thought, is that it's kind of interesting

and that you can have a broken heart, and then it gets better, and you're fine. And it seems that that is still usually the case. However, what we have learned in, and there are numerous studies that have been done on this phenomenon since then. I think, in part, because it's very interesting, it's captured a lot of imaginations.

And then also because we don't understand it well yet, and so we gotta keep studying it till we know it better. But there are cases that have led to complications, severe complications, and then recurrence. We've seen it come back again later, so to speak. In some rare patients, it has resulted in death. There have been patients who go into cardiogenic shock. Basically, their heart just cannot pump, which is bad, or have some sort of arrhythmias, some sort of abnormal

heart rhythm that can result in death. So while yes, it is possible that somebody can die of broken heart syndrome. So I guess in in your parlance die of a broken heart. Wow that pained you. Well, I don't want to make it sound more sensational than it is. Most of the time Takasubo's cardiomyopathy is something that can get better. There's been some argument with what we should do long term for this. Like did these patients need to be treated like a heart failure patient would because somebody who's been diagnosed with heart failure, we put on certain medications and they have to take them forever.

Some of the evidence has said yes, some of the evidence is still, maybe we're not sure yet. Maybe not harmful, but we don't know if it helps. We know that patients who, as a result of this, get like, clots and things should be treated with blood thinners, but the management is still very questionable. And in part, it's because we don't know why.

Why does it happen? Oh. We still don't completely understand that. There's definitely what we call sympathetic activation. Your sympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for the fight or flight response, definitely that's happening, right? You've been hit with some sort of intense emotion and your body. I mean, it's the stuff that you would feel like your heart speeds up and you breathe faster and you feel sweaty and anxious and like you need to run somewhere or punch somebody.

All that stuff that happens. And so we know that that's part of anxious, and like you need to run somewhere or punch somebody. All that stuff that happens. And so we know that that's part of it, but like there've been other studies that have said, maybe it's not just circulating stress hormones, maybe it has something to do with inflammation. There was one, there were some patients that looked like they were having multiple vessel spasms, meaning like the coronary arteries,

the arteries to your heart weren't blocked, but they were squeezing like a muscle spasm. They were spasming, shut, temporarily, and then opening up. But multiple vessels, which is weird. So there have been a lot of different studies to look at why, and nobody is 100% sure that we have a blanket reason for all cases yet.

There have been a lot of different sources of stress blamed and it's mostly negative. I thought this was very interesting. Most of the cases where this happened, it was something negative that happened. Like, there were a lot of people either like got bad news. Like the death of a loved one is a very common event. The precipitating event. But then there was one that said like an earthquake happened, and there were a lot of cases of this after following this earthquake, so like a natural disaster.

Something like that that seems very obvious. In rare cases, it seems that a happy event actually precipitated the Takasubos. Really? Yes. So they have found in 2016, the European Heart Journal published a study called Happy Heart Syndrome, role of positive emotional stress in Taka subo syndrome. And basically, their argument is they went back and looked at tons of patients who presented with Taka subo's cardiomyopathy. They narrowed it down to just the 485 that had like definable emotional triggers. Like they could, based on their record, they could say, this happened and then these symptoms happen. They could name it.

And of those 20 actually cited a positive event, something happened to them that was a good thing. So that I had to, I had to know, I have a list of things that happened, there were only 20 patients. So I had to look. So here are some examples, a birthday party, a wedding. A wedding was on there a couple times. Meeting friends from high school 50 years later. Wedding anniversaries, positive job interviews,

favorite driver, wanna race car competition. Sydney, so you're trying to free people out of being too happy? I'm not trying to freak him out. I just thought this was very interesting. Surprise parties are on here. A lot of birthday parties. You're saying we want the drive to go good, but not too good celebration of normal pet CT scan.

Oh my god Sydney Visiting with your grandchildren your favorite rugby team one Anyway, so there were these um These events that were that are pleasant happy events Yeah, they just gave they just broke people, but they came in with Yes, with stress induced cardio myopathy. I'm sorry. It's just, it's not me science is true.

She's the human body. This makes it, we've always kind of thought that positive emotions like we have all these studies that say like a positive outlook is associated with longer life and decrease more time. that say like a positive outlook is associated with longer life and decrease in mortality. Like we have some evidence that being happy and having good things, it's like that is associated with good health outcomes. But then this sort of made sense because the authors of the study pointed out that there is something that we can use to rate stressful life events. Did you know there was a scale of stressful life events? I didn't know this actually, but just because I've had to do that for therapy,

stuff before. And so they have the- And moving is very changing jobs, stuff of love one, stuff like that is all very- In 1967, two researchers went through tons of records, Thomas Holmes and Richard Ray, and found that there was a correlation between negative health outcomes and very stressful life events.

They came up with a list of the most stressful life events and gave them each a score. And then you could add up your score. Did any of these happen to you in the last year? Add up your score. And if it was so high, they could predict that you're probably going to end up in the hospital in the next year with some sort of medical problem, right? Or the social readjustment rating scale. It's interesting if you're gonna check it out. It's an interesting thing to look at. But among the most stressful events that can occur to you, our number 10 on the list is retirement,

which is not, I mean, it seems like it should be. It should be an overall, I know there are negatives, but overall a good thing. And number seven is actually a marriage, like your marriage, which marriage, getting married is the number seven most stressful life event. And if you go further down the list,

you'll still find positive events. Like vacation is on the list of a stressful life event. Well, I can be stressful, I guess, preparing for that. Christmas coming soon was a stressful life event and outstanding personal achievement was a stressful life. and outstanding personal achievement. Was a stressful life. Great. So if you think about it, it makes sense

that if stress causes illness and good stress causes illness, that a really intense, good thing might lead to talk to the subos. Everybody just be shooting for like the blandest life possible, right? Milk Ted. Nothing too good, life possible, right? Milk Ted. Nothing too good, nothing too bad right down the middle. There's still, so how, I don't have,

I don't think any researcher at this point could give you an idea of like how happy or how sad you can be before this happens. I don't think anybody could give you that or to know. I mean, like I said, we know some risk, like there seems to be a gender discrepancy and then age discrepancy in terms of who's at risk. Obviously, you would think people with prior cardiac problems are more at risk for this. It's not always necessarily true. It's extremely rare. Happy or sad.

It's extremely rare. That's something. It's extremely rare. Yes. But I guess if in the poetic sense, is it possible to die of a broken heart? Apparently it is. It's extremely rare and unlikely. Or getting, again, I just want to clarify in case they missed the context. Possible dive, Brigham Hart, or from getting mildly happy about your pets CT scan.

Yes. Or rugby team winning, or your favorite at Dick Trickle, when I said, when I said pet, and I'm dying because I'm so happy I die because I'm so happy about Dick Trickle winning the NASCAR race. Wait, I want to clarify something. When I said pet CT scan,

that a PET scan is a sir It's not your pet not like okay. All right, sorry. I just I'm sure confusing to literally everyone Sorry, that's a Differing medical nerd. There's a CT scan. There's a pet scan. This was a pet CT. It's combo anyway This is a specific kind of scan an imaging study, but I'm right about Dictricle Yeah, I'm really right killing me because I'm so thrilled.

Well, I don't know that it was dick trickle, but, you know, again, and if you're not a specific NASCAR driver, it's always gonna be dick trickle 100% of the time. And again, even if you have this, it's very unlikely that you would die. Good, well that's something, good job, Sid. Good. But here would be my practical advice to you.

It would be that if you have chest pain go to the hospital immediately. Sure. Easy. Yeah, that would be the practical advice. And in the meantime, I did find that some scientists have researched how to cure a broken heart and emotionally broken heart, like in the euphemistic broken heart.

I found a study where they were trying to figure out if somebody is experiencing very negative emotions as a result of heartbreak as a result of like a lost relationship. Some of it was like grieving a lost level and a lot of it had to do with like a breakup. What could you do? Is there a medicine for that? Well, so they did the art, they did the studies on Prairie Voles who were described in the article as being famously monogamous, which I feel very bad that I didn't know that Prairie Voles were famously monogamous,

because that seems like, I don't know what celebrities are dating who or the YouTubers, but I feel like I should have known that Prairie Voles were famously monogamous. Well, if they're famously monogamous, one would assume that we would know about this. Prairie voles were famously monogamous. Well, if they're famously monogamous, one would assume that we would know about this. Prairie voles are famously monogamous. And what they did is they found that, because they make forever, they find a partner and

they are with them until one of them dies and then they grieve the death of the partner vol. Okay. And so they were able to make the voles drop their lifelong partner and start kind of playing the field and dating other voles by blocking either dopamine or oxytocin chemicals in their brain. So they were able to use medications to block these hormones and they kind of severed these lifelong attachments.

We are very pro science here on solbos, but Sydney, if I could just take a minute to interrupt your glee, y'all are wild. These happy rats are just scooting around together in their little tiny rocking chairs, and you're like, I bet we could break them up with science. And another one's like, yes, do it. Oh my God, it's the best idea for all day. Let's break them up with science. Now another one's like, yes, do it. Oh my God, it's the best idea for

all day. Let's break them up with science. Now it's temporary, though, because once you stop the medicine, then it comes back. Okay, it's temporary. Well, let's hope they don't have any trouble finding each other because they're little vols. They probably lived for like a week. You're wild. They also found that they could block another hormone, corticotrip and releasing factor. The important thing is that they were able to stop grief in a vol who had lost its mate. Because they broke it up with chemicals and it ran into a lot more. This was in the case of like the death of a of a mate. They were able to stop the grief that they felt like in in a sense. And the question was, could this be a cure for unrequited love or for heartbreak?

Now, all the scientists who did this said, we are not proposing we do any of this. It was more of a theoretical... We had a week in a kill and a bunch of rats to break up. What are the hormones responsible for lust, love, attachment, heartbreak? Is there a way to... I mean, it was more of a hypothetical thing because you don't want to tamper too much with a lot of these. Vald relationships. Well, yeah.

And also, like they made the point that if you tamper too much with oxytocin, you might prevent somebody from forming any relationships. They get, yeah. I don't know. It also, it was a little eternal sunshine of the spotless mind for me. Yeah, it's a touch. Yeah, so I, and the scientists agreed with that. So nobody is proposing any of this,

but I thought it was a very interesting effort to try to cure a broken heart right now. I don't think there is a better cure than time, exercise, drink a lot of water, get plenty of sleep. It's been time with the people you love and get hugs, physical contact with other humans, like a nice pad on the back or handshake or hug was found to be helpful in helping somebody heal from a heartbreak kind of thing. And take care of yourself

and get back out there when you're ready. I mean, I think that's still like, that still holds true is the best advice. You know, one thing that I've always read is really good is donating money to organizations that you care about for getting over a broken heart. And what better organization than scientists breaking up voles since the beginning of time, just kidding, the maximum fun network. Don't donate to the scientists. Don't donate to kidding the maximum fun Network to the site The scientists of the scientists of this one specific scientist who has never broken up Vols in our entire life I've never done this. I wouldn't a maximum fund or for it's I should donate is the is the address this drive is only going for

This is the end of week one like I said we're behind where we like to be. And you could be the hero that turns that around for us. Please tweet at us with the Max Fund Drive hashtag. If you're a new or upgrading donor. So somebody can thank you personally. The, I should have mentioned that those gifts are for a new or upgrading donors. If you're currently a $5 donor and you want the pins or the bonus content, well, the bonus content you have, regardless, but if you want the pins, you got to upgrade to $10.

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you spend, you know, 13, 15 bucks a month on Netflix, whatever it is now or Hulu or magazines or, probably not magazines. I mean, because it's 2019, but you know, you spend money on other stuff. If you could spend money on our show, we would just, we would just really appreciate it. We would really appreciate it. We would also really appreciate that if you ever have chest pain, please go directly to a hospital. Great, perfect. That is going to do it for this week.

Thanks to taxpayers for these sorts of medicines at the intro and outro of our program. And thanks to you, you're listening. You're the tops. So until next week, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head. Alright!