Lewis HowesYour Personal 24/7 Greatness Coach

Grief can physically break your heart

15 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief conversational excerpt, Speaker A asks whether a broken heart can be fatal. Speaker B explains that severe emotional stress, such as the loss of a partner, can trigger a stress‑induced heart attack commonly known as "broken heart syndrome" (takotsubo or stress cardiomyopathy). While many individuals recover, the condition can lead to a genuine heart attack and, in some cases, death shortly after the bereavement. The dialogue highlights the physiological link between intense grief and cardiac events, noting that the syndrome is observed frequently in grieving spouses and that outcomes vary among patients.

Is it possible for someone to die from a broken heart?
Yeah, well, that— the stress-induced heart attack I told you about is often called broken heart syndrome.
Really?
Yes, because we do see it a lot if a partner or spouse has just died and that person is grieving, and they will— they can have a heart attack themselves and die
like shortly after.
Yeah, I mean, usually you recover from the broken heart syndrome, but not everyone does.
You've seen it before?
Yeah, yes, yeah.
That's crazy. So they could be physically healthy,
totally fine, and just again, the massive release of that epinephrine, norepinephrine, we think from the brain that, you know, the brain is where you process your kind of feelings and fear and emotions in the hypothalamus and the pituitary release hormones that then go to your adrenal gland that causes your adrenal gland to release the epinephrine and the adrenaline and the norepinephrine and the cortisol. And that flood stuns the heart and causes this stress-induced broken heart syndrome.