Last Updated: December 25, 2022, 12:27 IST
The body can experience severe physiological effects from extreme emotions, such as those that one might occasionally feel when viewing a movie.
According to medical science, having a heart attack because of a jump scare or being overexcited while watching a movie is incredibly unusual
A man from Andhra Pradesh, who had gone to the theatre to enjoy a showing of James Cameron’s Avatar 2, died of a heart attack while watching the movie. The incident raises several questions. Did the film cause the man’s heart attack? Is it even a real thing that can happen to anyone? People can feel discomfort, get shaky, or even faint during scary or stress-inducing movies. However, medical science says that the occurrence of a heart attack due to a jump scare or getting over-excited when watching a film is extremely rare.
Intense emotions, which one might sometimes feel when watching a movie, can have an intense physiological impact on the body. This can cause a heart attack in individuals who are already susceptible to heart complications. This condition of literally being scared to death is called stress cardiomyopathy. It is also referred to as broken heart syndrome and takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
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When you go through physical or emotional stress, your brain reacts by kicking in the fight or flight response. As part of the response, your glands pump up extra amounts of the adrenaline hormone. With a rise in adrenaline levels, heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose levels going up is common. This also affects the heart’s pumping rhythm, causing constriction of blood vessels, arrhythmia, or spasms. Thus, stress-induced cardiomyopathy happens when stress causes dysfunction or failure of the heart muscle. This is usually temporary, with the heart returning to normal functioning once the stressor is gone and the hormone levels are back to normal. However, in very rare instances, the adrenaline-infused fight or flight response can cause a heart attack.
It is much more common if you already have pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure. Since it is difficult to predict whether or not you will have a heart attack due to such a response, it is advisable to avoid such stressors as much as possible.
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