How Grief Shows Up In Your Body

July 11, 2019 — It’s surprising how physical grief can be. Your heart literally aches. A memory comes up that causes your stomach to clench or a chill to run down your spine. Some nights, your mind races, and your heart races along with it, your body so electrified with energy that you can barely sleep. Other nights, you’re so tired that you fall asleep right away. You wake up the next morning still feeling exhausted and spend most of the day in bed. Amy Davis, a 32-year-old from Bristol, TN, became sick with grief after losing Molly, a close 38-year-old family member, to cancer. "Early grief was intensely physical for me," Davis says. "After the shock and adrenaline of the first weeks wore off, I went through a couple of months of extreme fatigue, with nausea, headaches, food aversion, mixed-up sleep cycles, dizziness, and sun sensitivity. It was extremely difficult to do anything . … If there’s one thing I want people to know about grief, it’s how awful it can make your body feel." What causes these physical symptoms? A range of studies reveal the powerful effects grief can have on the body. Grief increases inflammation , which can worsen health problems you already have and cause new ones. It batters the immune system , leaving you depleted and vulnerable to infection. The heartbreak of grief can increase blood pressure and the risk of blood clots. Intense grief can alter the heart muscle so much that it causes " broken heart syndrome ," a form of heart disease with the same symptoms as a heart attack. Stress links the emotional and physical aspects of grief. The systems in the body that process physical and emotional stress overlap, and emotional stress can activate the nervous system as easily […]

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