In February, a doctor's thoughts turn not just to love but to how love affects physical and emotional health.
Phoenix physician Art Mollen, thoughts adrift as he swam laps one day recently, remembered a Mark Twain comment that love "is a condition of the heart for which there is no cure and for which the afflicted wishes none either."
Love, Mollen says, is an irrational feeling, a hard-to-describe combination of passion, desire, respect and admiration for another. But it's far easier to explain as a health condition with specific symptoms.Question: How do you describe love in medical terms?
Answer: Certainly everyone hopes for Cupid's arrow to pierce their heart this Valentine's Day, but unfortunately for some of them the piercing could leave their heart hemorrhaging profusely, causing them to experience insomnia, indigestion, irritability, confusion, chest and stomach discomfort, heart palpitations, dilation of the pupils, excessive sweating and even depression.
Q: What chemical process creates feelings of love?
A: That initial feeling of walking on air, believing that nothing else matters, occurs when a chemical in the brain called phenylethylamine (PEA) is released and produces infatuation and euphoria. Chocolate can also stimulate the production of PEA, too. . . . Dopamine, a pleasure chemical in the brain affected by love, gives us a natural high. And then there are pheromones, the elusive, odorless chemicals given off in response to romantic fantasy and sexual stimulation.
Q: Is it true people in an emotionally healthy relationship are healthier physically?
A: People in a long-term, loving relationship are unequivocally healthier from a physical standpoint, with better control of their blood pressure and cholesterol, for example.
Q: What's the association between love and emotional health?
A: True love is mutually supporting, caring and giving, and as much about the other person as it is about yourself. You want to do everything you can to make the other person feel good. It's a very positive thing to love someone long-term.
But people in short-term, infatuation-type relationships can become extremely unhealthy, particularly if they move too fast. For example, love addicts become dependent on the physical and psychological experiences triggered by PEA. They're consumed and obsessive, dependent and parasitic, manipulative and controlling, and they require full, unconditional devotion. So when you see these red flags, my advice is to run, and run fast.
Q: What's your reaction when people say they're hurting from a broken heart?
A: Well, they certainly can suffer significant health consequences. It's not uncommon for people to experience severe depression when a relationship ends, and the longer the relationship existed, the more difficult it can be and the longer it can take to recover.
Q: What can help recovery?
A: You have to give yourself permission to go through all the stages of grief when you break up with someone, and that can take a significant amount of time. It's good to keep a journal for catharsis and to synthesize what you've learned from the relationship so you don't make same mistakes again.
Art Mollen, D.O., is a board- certified osteopathic family physician and medical director of the Mollen Clinic in Phoenix. See him on "Good Morning Arizona" at 8:15 a.m. Tuesdays and 7:15 a.m. Sundays on Channel 3 (KTVK). Also catch him on "Feeling Good" at 2 p.m. Saturdays on KTAR (92.3 FM).
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