Over the summer I began to study a disease originally founded in Japan known as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy which is the scientific name for the closest disease to date that links death with patients who suffered from having a broken heart. A lot of my research entailed this diagnosis happened predominately in older women in the Postmenopausal stages of life. The medical review of what happens is “characterized by transient, often severe, left ventricular dysfunction and electrocardiographic changes that might mimic acute myocardial infarction in the absence of significant obstructive coronary artery disease. Excessive catecholamine stimulation, metabolic abnormalities, and microcirculatory dysfunction are thought to be responsible for the manifestations of this disorder.”
The disease mimics the feeling of a heart attack brought on by extreme emotional and or physical stress. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the death or loss of a loved one, although many case studies present that as a leading cause, it can also result in a multitude of scenarios that extend themselves to feeling a sudden or prolonged, avoided build up of extreme emotional and or physical stressors.
The term Takotsubo means octopus trap in Japanese. It was given this name because the left ventricle in the heart mimics the shape of an octopus trap that allows octopuses to go in but not come out due to the trap closing behind it. Similarly to the left ventricle during a TC attack whereby the left ventricle closes deterring the circulation of blood to flow in and out of the ventricle.
I am fascinated by the idea of dying from a broken heart and the reason I am making this post about Takotsubo is because I plan on making a series of melodramatic 1960’s art works using the female figures and aesthetics of Roy Lichtenstein’s work. His piece, Drowning Girl, will be one of the many works I plan to appropriate in this series.
I think the idea of dying from a broken heart is incredibly artistic and beautiful even if in some cases it is a very dark and painful experience. The beauty in loving that deeply and passionately for someone I find to be rather intoxicating.