Love has a strong impact on human health. It can cause a natural high and even improve your physical well-being, but the loss of it can also have detrimental effects.

How can love improve your health?
"Love is a biological necessity that is as vital to a person's well-being as fresh water, food and exercise," Stephanie Cacioppo, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon, said to National Geographic. Being in love releases hormones including oxytocin, vasopressin, dopamine and serotonin. "When the love network is turned on, it activates the brain's reward centers, releasing a cascade of hormones, neurochemicals and natural opioids that make us feel joy and also help our body heal and our mind deal with pain," Cacioppo said.

Married couples tend to enjoy longer life spans, perhaps because of the "consistent social and emotional support, better adherence to medical care and having a partner who can hold you accountable to healthy lifestyle behaviors," said Time. "Married couples have lower rates of substance abuse, lower blood pressure and less depression than single peers."

How can a broken heart hurt your health?
"We pay the price of having emotional responses when we lose our companions," Sue Carter, the emeritus director of The Kinsey Institute, said to National Geographic. Experiencing a heartbreak denies the body the feel-good hormones it was receiving regularly and increases the production of stress hormones like cortisol and norepinephrine. 

Physical symptoms like depression, anxiety, loss of appetite, weight changes and trouble sleeping can all stem from grief. "When social bonds are broken by separation or loss of a partner, the nervous system needs time to re-equilibrate and adjust," said Carter. 

Some people experience broken heart syndrome, a "heart condition brought on by extreme emotions," the Mayo Clinic said. It can even be fatal, as it causes short-term heart muscle failure. “One groundbreaking study of grief from the 1960s looked at 4,486 widowers in Britain," said Cacioppo. "During the first six months after they lost their spouses, they had a 40% higher risk of dying than a married person their own age." 

Firefighters work on a burned residential building after it was engulfed in flames, killing at least four people and injuring 13 others in Valencia, Spain.  
Alberto Saiz / AP

The scariest book of 2023 wasn't a horror novel — it was Irish novelist Paul Lynch's Booker Prize-winning "Prophet Song." Set in an alternate present-day Ireland, the book follows married pair Eilish and Larry Stack. He is plotting protests against the newly elected Party and its assaults on civil rights but goes missing when the new Garda National Services Bureau (GNSB), a kind of Irish KGB, starts cracking down on dissenters. Eilish is left to care for their four children as society disintegrates.

Template for America
While set in Ireland, "Prophet Song" is a realistic look at how a new American civil war might unfold. Fascists are elected and chip away at the constitutional order bit by bit, so that many people hardly notice what has been lost until it is too late.

In popular imagination, this would be a red-versus-blue affair. But Lynch's book shows it would instead be neighbor versus neighbor, with cities divided against themselves. It is easy to imagine this happening in the United States after an authoritarian takeover, given how Republicans and Democrats are not separated into neat geographic enclaves.

Time to leave
Eilish's sister, Áine, pleads with her to flee to Canada, delivering the novel's most unforgettable line: “History is a silent record of people who did not know when to leave." But Eilish refuses to go. Considering how despots could stage a takeover of the U.S., "Prophet Song" is as illuminating as any real-life history.