How and why emotional pain can lead to physical pain and illness
Florence Williams
"This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Heartbreak can make you physically ill. Take my guest, science journalist Florence Williams - when her husband left her after more than 25 years, they had to devise a plan for co-parenting. And she says physically, she felt like her body had been plugged into a faulty electrical socket. She lost 20 pounds. She'd stopped sleeping. She developed diabetes. It was hard to think straight. She wanted to understand why the emotional upset she was experiencing was also causing her body and brain to malfunction. She found in recent years science had begun to investigate the biological pathways of this brand of pain. She traveled across the U.S. and to England to report on researchers investigating how and why emotional pain can lead to physical pain and illness." - Terry Gross
Podcast/Transcript: Heartbroken? There's a Scientific Reason Why Breaking Up Feels So Rotten
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