Another good reason for cooling it

In a remarkable study published recently in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine doctors report new findings supporting what some of you have suspected all along: sudden emotional stress can bring on severe heart malfunction, even in people without heart problems to begin with. The doctors call the condition "myocardial stunning," which is as bad as it sounds. As the report reminds us, the potentially lethal consequences of emotional stress are rooted in folk wisdom, which has always used such terms as "scared to death," and "a broken heart." While being stricken with "stress cardiomyopathy" is not as poetic sounding as suffering from a broken heart, the underlying cause now seems to be the same. And as a special warning, the report also suggests that this kind of sudden heart malfunction is probably more common than generally thought. Even worse, even nonemotional stress can bring on the same heart problems. You may not always be able to avoid a broken heart situation, but you can try to keep it cool otherwise.

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