Going through a breakup is never easy, whether you’ve been with your significant other for five months or five years. You might feel like you’ve hit rock bottom and life will never be beautiful again. Your friends might tell you you’re just overreacting and being a drama queen, but some of the things you experience after a split are quite real. That being said, read on to find out what can happen to your body after a tough breakup.
You can get acne after a breakup
You might not have experienced skin issues in the past, but an unexpected breakup can seriously mess with your skin and spark an acne breakout. A bad breakup causes a lot of stress, which in turn elevates your cortisol levels and cause inflammation in the skin. As explained by Beverly Hills dermatologist Debra Luftman, “because your adrenaline is increased and your entire body is on high alert, inflammation increases and your skin reacts to that.”
Additionally, many people resort to comfort food to cope with their stressful breakup, but such foods are usually high in sugar and could aggravate the inflammation.
Your heart and your body might ache
A breakup might be hurtful both emotionally as well as physically. That’s because the specific region of the human brain responsible for the processing of emotional pain is also the one that handles the processing of physical pain.
The link between heartbreak and pain has also been confirmed in a 2011 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers analyzed the effect of fMRI activity related to social rejection and physical pain on parts of the brain “linked to the sensory and affective components of physical pain”. The conclusion was that negative experiences such as rejections and breakups could cause health problems such as fibromyalgia and somatoform, both characterized by chronic pain all over the body.
In addition, the study revealed that someone dating a person for a shorter period of time can experience a heartbreak just as powerful as that of a person breaking up after a longer period.
