Re: "Cardiologists Should Care about our Love Lives"

To the editor:

Sandeep Jauhar (NYT, 9.16.18, Cardiologists should care about our love lives) powerfully illustrates the way negative emotions can damage heart functioning in the case of  'broken heart' syndrome and how stress reduction can improve cardiac health.  But he too quickly dismisses the heart as a 'source' for emotions and adopts a dualistic way of thinking when distinguishing our 'hearts' from our 'emotional system.'

The seminal research by affective neuroscientists like Antonio Damasio and others supports the view that our metaphoric use of language to describe our emotions (heart break, gut wrenching, pain in the neck, pissed off  - among others) has a literal, concrete basis. We rely on our bodies, not only our hearts, to 'tell us' how we feel. This takes place automatically and largely unconsciously in the way we carry ourselves and the state of our viscera. An anxious patient with a racing heart feels his tachycardia as his anxiety regardless of the mental trigger.  In other words, our emotions are embodied.

The takotsubo cardiomyopathy is an extraordinary example of a coming together of the concrete and metaphoric broken heart.  But the healthy heart, however silently, is itself, expressing a state of emotion whether it be peace, calm or love.  I applaud Dr. Jauhar for emphasizing the critical importance of taking emotional factors into consideration when treating the physical body.

Respectfully submitted

Larry S. Sandberg