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 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.
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.
Your heart is not the only thing that’s broken after a breakup. Your brain could also suffer the consequences of this bad episode in your life and completely change its chemistry in order for you to cope with the situation.
A tough breakup can leave you feeling that you’re a completely different person. For the most part, it’s not just a feeling, it’s actually something that happens in your brain. “In the immediate aftermath of a breakup, we’re going to experience these abrupt chemical changes almost as we would a type of withdrawal,” explains licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Kristin Bianchi.
When you are in a relationship, the chemicals responsible for the pleasure and happiness centers, namely dopamine and serotonin, and oxytocin, a hormone involved in reproduction, play a leading role. When you are single, these chemicals vanish into thin air, pretty much like your significant other, leaving your brain craving to have all of them back. They don’t say love is a drug for no reason!
You might have been head over heels in love with your partner and that might have clouded your judgment more than once, but single life might affect your decision-making skills even more.
Breakups are stressful, no doubt about it. Living with this stress every day can adversely affect the chemicals in the prefrontal cortex of your brain which helps you concentrate and make decisions. You start doubting your judgment, become indecisive and unable to make up your mind. Other people are triggered by a breakup to make impulsive and uncharacteristic decisions with long-term consequences, such as alcohol consumption, warns physician Dr. Mira Kaga.
If you find it difficult to recover from a breakup, you should know you’re not alone. There’s nothing wrong in taking some time to “grieve that loss almost like you would a death,” says dating expert Charly Lester.
Sleep might not come easy after you’ve broken up with the person you thought would be your “forever”. It might be difficult to quiet down your mind, stop thinking of all the “what ifs” and “maybes” and just get some shut-eye.
According to psychotherapist Ronald A. Alexander, sleep disorders such as insomnia are common side effects of breakups and, unfortunately, they don’t go away that easily. Post-breakup insomnia can last for a few weeks and “the best thing you can do is try to feed your dopamine [the ‘feel-good chemical’] receptors in other ways”. Go out more, start new hobbies, meet new people and get involved in activities that take your mind off the split, suggests sex and relationship therapist Shan Boodram.
If you’ve ever been through a bad breakup, you know there are times when all you want is to wrap yourself in a blanket and cozy up to a tube of Ben&Jerry. But there’s a reason why ice-cream is people’s go-to breakup food. “The areas of the brain in charge of emotions and emotional pain also [regulate] how we eat, our need for food, and what we taste,” explains neurobiology professor Gert ter Horst.
You might not feel like eating after a split, but when you do decide to grab something, you will automatically go for fatty, sugary foods. These types of foods release feel-good chemicals, such as oxytocin, whose production is affected by the stress caused by the breakup. The more you eat, the better you will feel, at least for a while.
Lack of sleep, stress and poor nutrition can take a toll on your immune system. This means a split could not only leave you out in the cold but could also increase your risks of catching a cold too. When you are a in stressful situation, like a breakup, your body kicks into the “fight or flight” mode and starts producing more adrenaline and cortisol. While the production of such chemicals takes the spotlight, your immune system is left in the shadows, making you more vulnerable to common colds or even the flu.
The longer the stressful period, the higher the stress levels and the weaker the immune system. This situation can also trigger inflammation, which, in turn, makes it even harder to keep illnesses at bay. Luckily, immunity can be boosted in several ways. Here’s one of them!
You might feel like it’s difficult to keep your head together after breaking up with your significant other but there might be something else you might have real trouble keeping: your hair. “It’s not uncommon for women to suffer hair loss after the stress of a relationship breakdown,” explains the Institute of Trichologists‘ medical director Dr. Bessam Farjo.
One way for your body to respond to a stressful breakup is to increase its production of the chemical androgen, which can suppress hair growth in women. An additional response to stress would be for the body to send neurotransmitters into your systems that could alter your immune system. This response might determine white cells to perceive hair follicles as infections and try to fight them off, causing hair loss.
An unexpected split is the kind of event that can make anyone’s blood boil. Your heart starts beating faster, your muscles become tense and your blood pressure rises. That’s entirely because of cortisol, the stress hormone released by the adrenal glands into your bloodstream to help you cope with stress. But in doing so, cortisol sends your nervous system into overdrive, telling it that it’s time to fight; unfortunately, the way the nervous system fights back is by sending signals into the body, which end up increasing your blood pressure.
This is not to say that cortisol is not helpful in combating stress. It’s just that too much of it over an extended period of time can lead to anxiety, physical exhaustion, and other possible symptoms such as high blood pressure. Luckily, these natural methods can help you lower your blood pressure and keep it under control at all times.
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.
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.
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