The Physical Impacts of Emotions on your Brain and Heart

Imagine, your favorite team loses in the finals or you fail a test you’ve been working so hard on and you just lost your chance to make state. We humans face many emotional occurrences. And when we experience this, it not only impacts us mentally but also physically. During this moment your brain and heart communicate to each other. These emotions impact the heart beat, shapes, and heart pumps. Today we will explore the physical impact of emotions on your brain and heart. 

Chemical Fight 

When your body is very stressed the amygdala signals the body to release a chemical called cortisol and adrenaline. This is basically your body’s “smoke detector”. The amygdala processes the danger or stress and then the signal is transferred to the Hypothalamus. The hypothalamus is the brain's control center which sends signals down from the spinal cord. This signal will travel to the adrenal glands which are above the kidneys. These glands will release cortisol and hormones. Now, you might think adrenaline is a good thing, only if your running from a bear. Adrenaline increases your heart rate, making your heart beat way faster and squeeze your blood vessels tighter. Cortisol impacts the body slowly, but being stressed for weeks or months, excessive cortisol can hurt the inside of your blood vessels and raise your blood pressure. 

Changing The Hearts Shape and Blood Flow

When someone faces a massive shock or is extremely sad, a giant wave of adrenaline can stun the heart. The bottom of the heart turns into a balloon, changing its shape and making it harder to pump blood. It is basically a heart attack, all caused by a feeling. With immense sadness and constant stress, the body can be tricked into believing it has physical damage. Then, the immune system creates swelling (inflammation) inside your blood vessels. This blocks smooth blood flow.  

Impact on Hearts Electricity

Stress impacts the heart's ability to pump blood in its natural rhythm. Although your heart doesn’t always breathe normally, stress drastically impacts your heart's pulse. The heart naturally changes its pulse based on how fast you breath but it doesn’t change as much as stress impacts your heart. In addition, extreme anger can disrupt electrical signals that tell your heart when to pump blood. This causes the heart to skip beats and have abnormal rhythms.

Although the heart is small, it connects to every aspect of your body with its vessels stretching 60,000 miles long. These astounding links of the heart and brain are incorporated into positive and negative experiences in life. The heart pumps and releases blood almost 100,000 times a day. It is very important to not take our organs for granted as they all serve an important function, besides the: appendix, gallbladder, and adenoids.