You won’t gain weight after a breakup
While eating like there’s no tomorrow seems like the perfect solution to get over our ex, most of us don’t give a second thought to all the added calories brought on by our sorrow-induced bingeing habits.
I know calories are the last thing on your mind after a split, but if you have the slightest of hesitations in finishing that Ben&Jerry tube, there’s actually no reason for you to worry about gaining weight. According to a study from 2019 published in The Journal of Evolutionary Studies Consortium, a stressful breakup can have many unexpected effects but weight gain is not one of them. As explained by Penn State Harrisburg associate professor Dr. Marissa Harrison, people might resort to fatty foods for a day or two, but “modern humans do not tend to gain weight after a breakup.” However, if you know you can put on extra pounds just for breathing next to a candy bar, you might want to be a bit more careful with what and how much you eat.
You could experience the broken heart syndrome
If you thought a broken heart is just a metaphor, think again. It turns out there really is such a thing as a broken heart syndrome. According to cardiologist Dr. John M. Kennedy, it describes the intense effects of a heartache on a person’s body, like “a surge of stress hormones, such as adrenaline” which might cause severe chest pains.
The broken heart syndrome might feel like a heart attack, but unlike one, the arteries don’t become clogged, although Mayo Clinic warns that “blood flow in the arteries of the heart may be reduced”. The silver lining is that the broken heart syndrome can be treated and is rarely fatal.
