Breakups, divorces and heartaches. The chemical reaction in the human body when someone suffers from love
People experience love-related pain differently. Whether it's a breakup, mourning or a love disappointment, scientists say that the body's reaction is the same.
Whether it's the first breakup or the loss of a great love, the pain is equally crushing.
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Doubts arise, along with a sense of insecurity. Questions, such as "Where?", "How?" and "Why?" things changed become overwhelming. To these questions, the overwhelming feeling of remorse is added - "What if?".
Well, studies have shown that love pain is also felt physically. Where does the headache come from? And the lack of energy? Why do we soothe our suffering with food? Scientists have answers to all these questions.
"The Holy Trinity"
As Dr. Lucy Brown, a neuroscience researcher, says, "we all feel miserable when we're broken up with". It seems there's a powerful chemical cocktail that explains why we feel this way after a breakup.
Serotonin is the brain chemical associated with happiness, oxytocin with love, and dopamine is pumped whenever the human mind's "reward system" kicks in. The key chemical element is by far dopamine, also known as the "ultimate natural drug".
Dr. Brown, along with a team of researchers, conducted a study on the impact of suffering by scanning the brain activity of 15 young adults going through breakups.
They were shown pictures of their former partners, and the scans showed that parts of the brain that fuel our sense of motivation and reward - where dopaminergic neurons reside - were activated.
It's a "hyperactivity" that Brown compares to what we see in a cocaine addict.
"It's as if we're addicted to each other", says Dr. Brown, according to Sky News.
"When we lose someone, we lose a very satisfying part of our lives. Partners offer novelty in our lives, which no longer exists, so we need other rewards", the doctor explained.
Journalist Florence Williams wrote a book recounting her traumatic divorce experience.
After separating from her partner with whom she had a 25-year relationship, Williams says she began to feel physically unwell.
"I was, of course, stunned by the event itself, but then I was very confused and surprised at how different I felt physically going through it. That feeling of being connected to a faulty electrical outlet. This tumultuous feeling of background anxiety and hypervigilance and the inability to sleep well, weight loss and general confusion. My body felt threatened", she says.
The feeling of confusion led her to seek answers and document a book - "Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey". She discovered that, although everyone's pain is different, the body's response is almost the same.
