This report is not surprising.
Hard to lose a spouse or loved one without depression and grief that puts some stress on the autonomic system.
The autonomic nervous system stimulates under stress. Causes insomnia, anxiety feelings, raises adrenaline levels.
I am actually surprised the number is not higher for events.
Risk of Cardiovascular Events Increased After Partner’s Death
JAMA Intern Med 2014 Feb 24;[EPub Ahead of Print], IM Carey, SM Shah, S Dewilde, T Harris, CR Victor, DG Cook
Research · March 12, 2014
TAKE-HOME MESSAGE
The risk of myocardial infarction (MI) or stroke is increased about twofold within 30 days of a partner’s death in bereaving patients (0.16%) compared with matched non-bereaving controls (0.08%). Risk of rarer events, including non-MI acute coronary syndrome and pulmonary embolism, was also doubled in the first 90 days.
Although the risk appears to be causal, the difference in cardiovascular risk between the bereaved and non-bereaved individuals is very small.
which goes back to my surprise that it isn’t worse.
Seems like a “no duh” conclusion, but I’m inclined to question obvious truths and rational conclusions, so it’s a fair question. The next question, though, would be “So what?” Is the point to show extra attention to the well-being of the recently bereaved? It’s pretty sad if some people need that spelled out for them. On the other hand, I’ve known some pretty callous, unempathetic people.
People tend to marry someone their own age +/- a few years. They also tend to adopt the same eating, sleeping, and exercise habits if they spend a few decades together. Barring extreme differences in genetic potentials, we should expect spouses to die within a few years of each other even without the powerful stress reactions and loss of support. (How many people rely on their spouse to remind them to take their medicine?) So there’s a sound logic reason and even a known causative mechanism (elevated cardiovascular stress) to believe the premise to be true.
There’s also the “will to live” principle. “Will to live” is a hard concept to quantify, but I’ve known too many people that work hospice and believe in the concept to just dismiss it out of hand. If you’ve lived the whole of your life with another person, it can be hard to justify continuing to live without them, especially if you’ve already passed whatever personal milestones you consider mark a “long and full” life. Could it be that survival plummets as a direct result of the patient just not wanting to live anymore? It’s certainly a popular romantic notion that, after a long, happy marriage, a person just can’t face living without their spouse. Hollywood particularly loves to claim someone literally “died of a broken heart”.
Unfortunately the study itself falls on slightly shaky ground for me. Saying “risk doubled” makes a pretty impressive statement. Clarifying that number of incidents doubled from 0.08% to 0.16% makes the claim less impressive. Further specifying that, in raw numbers, 50 of the 31250 people in the bereaved group suffered an incident compared to 67 of the 83750 people in the non-bereaved group renders the conclusion completely meaningless for me.
If the claim is that bereavement causes heart attacks and strokes, then how do you gloss over the fact that 99.84% of bereaved individuals did not have an incident within the 365 day window? If you compare that to the 99.92% in the non-bereaved group you get an 0.08% increase in incidence. Reframing that tiny change as a “doubling” of risk only serves to lessen understanding of the results for the sake of psychological impact.