Unrequited love is bad for your heart

During an average lifetime, the human heart will beat a maximum of 2.5 billion times, says UW–Madison cardiovascular physiologist Richard Moss. Does that mean that falling in love — an activity that increases the rate at which the heart beats — could shorten your life?

Only if it’s unrequited, jokes Moss during his annual Valentine’s Day lecture to first-year medical students.

“When people fall in love,” he explains, “their heart rate increases. Sometimes their hearts even skip a beat.” Even then the math suggests that the heart in love would tick faster, using up its lifetime of beats more quickly.

But, as Moss points out, the symptoms of falling in love are different than those of actually being in love.

“Being in love has a calming effect. After people fall in love and are in love, their resting heart rates tend to be much lower,” he says. Plus, studies show that couples involved in lasting, loving relationships live longer than those who aren’t.

As for heart health, Moss says, “it’s much better to fall in love and stay in love than to never fall in love at all.” But, he does mention that the most dangerous type of love is unrequited: “These people keep falling in love but don’t experience the long-term benefits of being in love.”

For evidence about love’s benefits, Moss turns to animals that seem especially well designed for amour (for the purpose of procreation). The oyster toadfish, for example, has a sonic muscle that vibrates nearly 200 times per second. This rapid vibration, Moss says, produces an alluring song that attracts mates.

Unlike the oyster toadfish, which spends its life on the ocean floor and has the time to attract a mate, many people are too busy for heart-racing romance. For these people, Moss recommends chocolate — a treat, he says, that can produce some of the same symptoms as falling for someone. Every year during the lecture, he offers chocolate hearts to his students, many of whom admit they have time only to study.

Although Moss says the annual lecture is primarily meant to be fun and alleviate his students’ stress at mid-term, he does say that it conveys important physiological lessons about “the salubrious effects of falling in love and the many animals that make love part of their lives.”

Moss, being the “hearty” guy he is, says, “Valentine’s Day is a high holiday. It’s the best day of my year!”