Grief is a natural human emotion that occurs when we experience a significant loss. It can be the loss of a loved one, a job, a home, or even a pet. However, in this series of blog posts, I’ve chosen to focus on the grief we feel when we lose our health. While grief is a normal and healthy response to loss, it can sometimes lead to physical and emotional health problems.
When Illness Becomes a Way of Life: How to Deal with Grief and Loss
In the last post, I divulged how losing your health can be an underrated cause of grief. I also discussed how medications and medical injuries can be one of the root causes of a decline in your health. Then I described many emotions you can experience due to the grieving process. Finally, I explained how grief can impact your quality of life and those around you. For this post, I’d like to address the question “can grief make you physically sick?”
To complicate matters further, stress has its own ramifications on your metabolism and nutrition. It doesn’t matter whether the source of the stress is emotional, psychological, spiritual or physical; it will always place extra demands on your body. So if you wonder can grief make you sick, the answer is yes. Grief can make you physically sick. So let’s talk about how grief can make affect your health.
How grief can make you physically ill
The first way that stress can impact your health occurs because, during the stress response, you produce higher levels of neurotransmitters and hormones called monoamines. The monoamines include catecholamines and indolamines. You’ll be familiar with the names of many monoamines because they include:
- adrenaline (epinephrine),
- noradrenaline (norepinephrine),
- serotonin,
- dopamine,
- melatonin,
- tyramine, and
- tryptamine.
When stressed, you release stress neurotransmitters like adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine and serotonin from your adrenal glands and nervous system as part of the fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop response. They work their magic and induce cascades of biochemical changes that trigger you to protect yourself. It goes without saying that grief is one of the cardinal forms of stress.
But once these neurotransmitters have done their job, what happens to them?
First, they need to be broken down so you can start winding down and relaxing again. One of the classes of enzymes that break down these monoamine neurotransmitters is unimaginatively called monoamine oxidase (MAO). MAO comes in two different flavours (MAO-A and MAO-B), but they work similarly.
I’ve mentioned MAO enzymes before in this article about body odour (of all things). The link between body odour and grief may appear tenuous at first glance. However, the chemicals that your body releases under the influence of fear and stress can give you (and anyone else within sniffing distance) an indication of how stressed you are and your antioxidant status.
In case you’ve forgotten, MAO enzymes appear to be the top source of free radicals causing mitochondrial damage inside our cells. And that’s because when they break down monoamines, MAO creates toxic compounds that your body needs to detoxify and eliminate. These toxic compounds are:
- hydrogen peroxide (H2O2 – a type of bleaching agent),
- ammonia, and
- aldehydes (pongy toxins and producers of free radical damage).
The Impact of Grief on Your Physical Health: Understanding Monoamine Oxidase and its Effects
Mitochondrial damage is a foundational component of metabolic syndrome and is at the heart of chronic illness and degenerative conditions. This includes the damage accrued by heavy metals and other toxins. We’re designed to cope with a certain amount of oxidative stress in our mitochondria – this is the Goldilocks zone where it’s neither too much nor too little. It’s a Nietzschean adaptive response where “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” So with manageable amounts of free radicals inside our cells, we respond by increasing the antioxidants we produce. And that creates fitter and healthier cells.
But excessive amounts of oxidative stress can overwhelm our ability to quench free radicals (often reactive oxygen species or ROS for short. But they can also be reactive nitrogen species). Excess free radicals start damaging the proteins, enzymes, membranes, and DNA inside our cells and mitochondria when this happens. Moreover, the free radicals can even amplify the damage they cause by creating a cascade of events with more toxic free radicals produced at each step.
These additional free radicals can produce advanced glycation end products (AGEs) like glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c) and pentosidine. They can also produce lipid peroxidation products like malondialdehyde. If you have been diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes, you should be tracking your HbA1c levels for an indication of how high your blood glucose levels are. HbA1c levels above the optimal range indicate you have excessive free radical production combined with inadequate antioxidants to defend against them.
So the first way that stress can be damaging is by creating toxins that poison your metabolism through the action of the MAO enzymes that we need to break down stress neurotransmitters. And this is one way you can end up literally feeling sick with grief.
The Hidden Dangers of Grief: Understanding the Impact on Your Health
The second way the stress response can hamper your health is by increasing your adrenal glands’ production of stress hormones like cortisol and other corticosteroids. Synthesising stress hormones is another immense drain on your nutrients. In particular, making and using stress hormones depletes your levels of coenzyme A. Coenzyme A is a nutrient that plays crucial roles in:
- energy balance,
- neurotransmitter production,
- blood clotting,
- your defence against oxidative stress, and
- making healthy cell membranes.
And you make coenzyme A from:
- vitamin B5 (pantothenic acid),
- the amino acid cysteine,
- magnesium, and
- ATP (our universal energy currency).
Since vitamin B5, cysteine, and magnesium are essential nutrients that we must replenish with our diets daily while ATP production decreases with mitochondrial dysfunction, it’s easy to see how prolonged stress can quickly exceed our ability to keep up with the body’s demands for these nutrients.
So driving up your production of steroid hormones made from cholesterol as part of the stress response can contribute to malnutrition, and this also helps to explain how grief can make you sick.
During stress, your adrenal glands and liver release large amounts of stored vitamin C (ascorbic acid) into your circulation under the influence of stress hormones. Ascorbic acid augments the stress response and protects your cells from the ravages of the extra waves of free radicals they create in response to stress hormones and monoamines. However, unlike most other animals, humans cannot synthesise our own vitamin C but must get it from our diets. So in a prolonged stress response, you can see how you could rapidly deplete your vitamin C levels. In fact, this acute scurvy plays a role in your susceptibility to sepsis and other infections when you’re run down and exhausted.
The stress response that sends us into sympathetic overdrive also impairs our digestion by directing our blood supply and energy away from our guts. As a result, stress:
- suppresses our production of stomach acid, digestive enzymes and bile,
- slows gut transit, and
- creates an environment in our intestines that is more hospitable to overgrowths of microbes in the wrong place (like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth) and the overgrowth of pathogenic microbes at the expense of friendly bacteria.
Grief Can Result in Malnutrition and Hinder Your Health
All this happens while impairing our ability to fight infections and manage the milieu of the microbes we host in our gastrointestinal tracts. At the same time, the foods we often crave while stressed tend to be ultraprocessed, high in food additives, carbohydrates and rancid vegetable oils, and low in complete proteins, vitamins and minerals. So it’s easy to see how we can develop malnutrition when stressed.
Driving up your production of steroid hormones made from cholesterol as part of the stress response can contribute to malnutrition, and this also helps to explain how grief can make you sick.
The emotional toll of grief can often lead to a lack of appetite, neglecting meals or not having the energy to prepare food, resulting in malnutrition. This can further exacerbate the physical symptoms of grief, such as fatigue and weakness. So it’s easy to see how we can develop malnutrition when stressed.
When we become more malnourished, our metabolism becomes even more impaired. And with deficiencies of nutrients, including B vitamins like thiamine (vitamin B1) and pyridoxal-5-phosphate (vitamin B6), we can start to produce excessive levels of metabolic toxins like oxalates. Oxalates also block vitamin B7 (biotin) and prevent biotin-dependent enzymes from functioning adequately. So our elimination of oxalates and other toxins (even normal byproducts of our metabolism) can be reduced by malnutrition through various means.
Oxalate elimination (or oxalate dumping) relies heavily on making and using sulphates properly because oxalates leave cells through sulphate channels (a type of solute channel) by exchanging with sulphate. But our sulphate production relies on adequate amounts of vitamin B6 (hopefully, you’ll remember that vitamin B6 is one of the nutrients that causes increased oxalate synthesis when it’s deficient).
To make sulphates, we also need adequate cysteine (the same amino acid we use to make coenzyme A and glutathione, our “master antioxidant”), and cysteine is already in short supply because of all the other vital roles it plays in our bodies. And we also need molybdenum as part of the transsulfuration pathway for synthesising sulphates. But unfortunately, it can be challenging to get sufficient molybdenum in your diet.
Oxalates will accumulate if you’re not eliminating them quickly enough from your body. The greater your body burden of oxalates, the worse you’ll feel.
Meanwhile, many other toxicants rely on the three phases of detoxification to exit your body. And each of these phases uses nutrients to function. Ergo, malnutrition will hamper your elimination pathways.
Again, if you’re not eliminating a toxicant, it will find somewhere in your body to make itself at home. As you read this, you may be thinking that if toxicants were people, they’d raise a couple of kids and get a dog after moving in. If only toxicants were so neighbourly. Toxicants will more likely trash your home (body), set fire to your possessions (tissues), and then try to extort all your money (ATP energy).
In summary, contributing to malnutrition is one of the ways grief can affect people’s health.
The Physical Toll of Grief on the Body
Excessively high or prolonged levels of circulating stress hormones like cortisol can also lead to:
- insulin resistance,
- high blood sugar levels,
- high blood lipids, and
- even more free radical damage from mismanaging calcium inside our cells.
Steroids like cortisol can also suppress your immune system in other ways. For example, have you ever picked up a cold, reactivated a cold sore, or ended up with shingles following a particularly stressful period? The immunosuppressive effects of high stress hormones also contributed to your vulnerability to infection.
In addition, mitochondrial damage, which releases fragments of dead and dying mitochondria from within our cells into your bloodstream, can also stimulate your immune response and cause chronic inflammation. To your immune system, your mitochondrial DNA resemble bacterial DNA rather than human genes, and mitochondrial proteins appear equally suspicious. These are called damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) and can trigger inflammatory pathways that can damage your tissues, including your heart. Of course, combatting the flames of inflammation requires large amounts of antioxidant nutrients like:
- vitamin C,
- B vitamins,
- glutathione,
- zinc,
- coenzyme Q10,
- selenium, and
- vitamin D.
Ironically, these are the nutrients that are depleted by remaining in sympathetic overdrive for too long – one of the principal underlying reasons for chronic inflammation in the first place.
Can Heartbreak Really Make You Physically Sick? Science Says Yes
The cumulative effect of being bombarded with many different stressors alongside suboptimal physiological responses, perhaps because you also suffer from sleep deprivation, toxicity, and malnutrition, can make your health spiral down. This is called allostatic overload. And allostatic overload can predispose you to develop broken heart syndrome. Broken heart syndrome is also called stress cardiomyopathy or Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. Thankfully, this is a rare type of heart damage, but it’s still life-changing. Broken heart syndrome tends to affect older people, especially women over 50, under extreme stress, such as after losing their spouse.
People with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy also have changes in their brain structures. Some parts of their brains appear shrunken on MRI imaging, while others are enlarged. And the neurones within several regions of their brains show unusual connectivity. The portions of the brain that are demonstrated to have the most noticeable changes are those involved with:
- language,
- emotion,
- reasoning,
- perception, and
- autonomic control (over functions like heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature regulation).
Grief really can have devastating effects.
People with Takotsubo cardiomyopathy also have changes in their brain structures. Some parts of their brains appear shrunken on MRI imaging, while others are enlarged. And the neurones within several regions of their brains show unusual connectivity. The portions of the brain that are demonstrated to have the most noticeable changes are those involved with:
- language,
- emotion,
- reasoning,
- perception, and
- autonomic control (over functions like heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature regulation).
Grief really can have devastating effects.
Your nutrient status becomes even more critical when you're under stress
Nutrition plays a mammoth role in your resilience to free radical damage because food (and supplements) are the source of the antioxidants our cells produce. And if you look at it from another perspective, the greater the stress you’re exposed to, the more your antioxidant nutrients are depleted, and the greater your need for better nutrition to counterbalance this. I’ve discussed which are the most nutrient-dense foods that are loaded with antioxidants here and here. But, unfortunately, they’re not what I was taught in medical school, and they’re probably not what you learned, either.
Prefer not to suffer from medication side effects? Me neither
Even if you’re intuitive, collating new symptoms you develop with medication side effects can take a while. And then, when you realise that the medications you’re taking create imbalances inside your body, it doesn’t take long to decide you’d like to be on as few medications as possible – preferably none. But then, how will you control your symptoms?
How grief can be a barrier to making changes that would help you to feel better and improve your health
Many people turn to supplements and make diet and lifestyle changes. This is the path I chose because it’s incredibly effective. But unfortunately, changing your diet and lifestyle usually means sacrificing even more when you’ve already lost so much. Add to this the fact that comfort foods can act as an emotional crutch to help you to face the worst days. Yet these foods are usually some of the least healthy and the most likely to add to your burden of unpleasant symptoms. Plus, they can be addictive and getting off some of them can cause withdrawal symptoms.
On the other hand, when you get overburdened with stress, instead of overeating, you might lose your appetite completely. And it can seem like too much of a hassle to prepare food, particularly if you live alone. In these circumstances, you can start wasting away and quickly become more malnourished.
Meanwhile, some of the lifestyle changes may seem unappealing and can be time-consuming. And diet and lifestyle changes tend to be something that you need to be consistent in. It can be hard to predict how long you’ll need to stick with making each of those changes to be guaranteed a better quality of life. For many things, the changes will need to be lifelong.
It’s essential to prioritise proper nutrition and make an effort to eat nutrient-dense foods that support your immune system and overall well-being. Seeking support from a nutritionist can help you develop an appropriate meal plan that meets your nutritional needs while dealing with grief.
In addition to looking at your diet, you should focus on getting enough sleep, moving and exercising regularly, and seeking support from friends, family, or a mental health professional. You may also find it helpful to practice relaxation techniques like meditation or deep breathing.
Grief is a natural and healthy response to loss, but it can sometimes lead to physical and emotional health problems. By understanding how grief affects your body and mind, you can take steps to care for yourself during this difficult time. Remember to seek support when needed, and be patient and kind to yourself as you work through your grief. If you’d like to speak with me to clarify whether dietary changes can help you regain your health and make you more resilient to grief, please set up a free clarity call here.
While focusing on healthy eating habits during the grieving process may be challenging, taking care of yourself is crucial for your mental and physical health. Remember that self-care is not selfish and that taking care of yourself is one of the best things you can do for your loved ones who are also going through their own grieving process.
