Why does heartbreak hurt? The science behind what happens to your brain and your body
Breakups are not much fun.
Whether it’s your first time through it or an unfortunate familiarity, there are few more agonising gut punches.
Doubts and insecurities aplenty; wondering where, how and why things changed; and like an agonising Lionesses World Cup run, an overwhelming sense of “what if”.
Being a “science and tech journalist” has given me a fresh perspective on how it can impact us physically.
Where’s that headache come from? What about a sudden lack of energy? And why does eating anything, even a normal favourite, feel like an I’m A Celebrity challenge?
For when pictures of wistful poetry on Instagram just don’t cut it, it turns out science has some answers.
The holy trinity
As neuroscientist Dr Lucy Brown puts it, “we’re all miserable when we’ve been dumped” – and there’s a potent chemical cocktail that helps explain why.
Serotonin is the brain chemical associated with happiness, oxytocin with bonding, and dopamine gets pumped out whenever your mind’s reward system kicks in.
No surprise then that you feel good when that holy trinity is high and rough when it’s low.
The key chemical is dopamine: the ultimate natural drug.
‘It’s like we’re addicted’
Brown was one of a team of researchers who conducted a study into the impact of heartbreak, scanning the brain activity of 15 young adults who were going through unwanted breakups.
They were shown photos of their ex-partners, and the scans showed parts of the brain that power our sense of motivation and reward – where our dopaminergic neurons live – went into overdrive.
It’s an “overactivity” Brown compares to what you’d see in a cocaine addict trying to wean themselves off.
“It’s like we’re addicted to each other,” she says.
“When we lose someone, we’ve lost a very rewarding part of our lives and sense of self. They’ve provided novelty in your life that now isn’t there, so we need some other rewards.”
And like rewatching goals we may have thought had put the Lionesses’ name on the title, looking back at texts and holiday photos won’t do the trick.
Maybe next time… Pic: AP
A body under threat
Florence Williams had found herself intrigued by the pain her heartbreak caused.
Having seen her 25-year marriage suddenly fall apart, trauma was expected. But feeling physically sick and totally overwhelmed took her by surprise.
“I was of course stunned by the event itself, but then I was really confused and surprised by how different I felt physically going through it,” she says.
“That feeling of being plugged into a faulty electrical socket; this buzzing sense of background anxiety and hypervigilance and an inability to sleep well; the weight loss and general confusion.
“My body felt under threat.”
Williams’s experience and sense of confusion sent her on a global quest for answers documented in her book, Heartbreak: A Personal And Scientific Journey.
She found while everyone’s personal heartbreak is different, the bodily response is much the same: it’s time for that holy trinity of hormones to take a battering.
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Florence Williams. Pic: Casie Zalud
‘Very real’ physical symptoms
And it’s not just emotional pain you may struggle with. In Brown’s study, brain areas associated with physical pain were also activated.
She explains rejection triggers a part of the brain called the insular cortex – the same part that responds to distress around pain, like when panic sets in after an already painful bee sting.
When emotional stress causes physical symptoms, like headaches and nausea, its medical term is somatisation.
“If you’ve ever had butterflies when you’ve been nervous, you’ve experienced this,” explains Dr Abishek Rolands.
“The most important thing to remember is even though there is no physical cause, the symptoms are very real – they are not made up or ‘all in the head’.”
During her research, Williams, who has two adult children with her ex-husband, was particularly fascinated by the impact loss can have on our immune system.
“It’s important for our nervous systems that we feel safe,” she says.
“If we have people in our lives triggering cascades of healthy hormones, it’s really protective against illness. Our cells actually listen to our mental state.”
Indeed, previous studies have stressed the importance of meaningful social relationships to stay healthy.
And in 2021, US researchers suggested our immune system takes cues from our nervous system if it’s struggling – effectively making decisions that could make us sick.
Broken heart syndrome
In rare cases, this kind of emotional distress – especially when delivered suddenly – can even lead to the fittingly nicknamed “broken heart syndrome” – or takotsubo cardiomyopathy.
Sindy Jodar, a senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, says the symptoms – chiefly shortness of breath and chest pain – are consistent with a heart attack.
“Most people have either been under a lot of physical or emotional stress, like losing a loved one,” she says.
“The only explanation we have at the moment is when the body is stressed, it releases a lot of catecholamines (adrenaline), and when lots of that is around in the body it can impact the heart.”
Unlike a heart attack, the condition does not cause blockages in the coronary arteries – but does totally change the shape of the heart’s left ventricle, which pumps oxygenated blood through the body.
It’s this which gives the condition its actual Japanese name, as the shape of the ventricle becomes reminiscent of a trap fishermen use to catch octopus: narrow at the top, larger at the bottom.
The condition only impacts around 5,000 people a year in the UK, and is more common in menopausal women, with most recovering after a few weeks.
The condition’s symptoms are consistent with a heart attack
Giving up the addiction
Just as science can explain why heartbreak, rejection, and loss makes us feel the way we do, it also offers solutions.
Brown says heartbreak should be treated like “having to give up an addiction”, though she admits the “craving is stronger when we’ve lost someone”.
But there are plenty of roads to go down without gorging ice cream while watching La La Land.
Williams stresses the importance of working to activate the parasympathetic part of your nervous system by doing things that make you feel calm. The other part of our autonomic nervous system, sympathetic, is what causes anxiety and hypervigilance.
“Connection to nature is really calming,” she says, likewise to friends and family. “And there’s lots of data showing the more meaning you derive from work, the more purpose you feel, the happier you’ll be.”
Williams says such lessons apply to anyone “going through an emotional life quake”.
“People who end a relationship also face big emotions – guilt, sadness, loneliness,” she adds.
Walks in nature are great for clearing your mind
And as Brown says, there’s novelty – that sense of excitement that needs refreshing in a healthy, sustainable way.
Ice cream makes a compelling dinner once, but you’d probably best hope it wears off.
“A good strategy is beginning things you didn’t do during a relationship, like running or travelling,” says Brown.
“People always remember a heartbreak – it’s very painful. But you do change, and can for the better.”
The UK has stopped sharing some intelligence with the US on suspected drug trafficking boats in the Caribbean following concerns over America’s strikes against the vessels.
The US has reported carrying out 14 strikes since September on boats near the Venezuelan coast.
The death toll from the US attacks in the Pacific and the Caribbean Sea has risen to more than 70, as the US escalates a military build-up in the Caribbean Sea.
Downing Street did not deny reporting by CNN that the UK is withholding intelligence from the US to avoid being complicit in US military strikes it believes may breach international law.
Britain, which controls several territories in the Caribbean where it bases intelligence assets, has long assisted the US in identifying vessels suspected of smuggling narcotics based on intelligence gathered in its overseas territories in the region.
The USS Gravely destroyer arrives to dock for military exercises in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago on 26 October (AP Photo/Robert Taylor)
That information helped the US Coast Guard locate the ships, seize the drugs and detain their crews, CNN cited sources as saying.
But since the Trump administration started carrying out strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats in early September, UK officials have become concerned their intelligence may be used to acquire targets for the attacks they believe may be illegal.
The intelligence-sharing pause began more than a month ago, CNN reported, quoting sources as saying Britain shares UN’s human rights chief Volker Turk’s assessment that the strikes amount to extrajudicial killing.
The reports could provide an awkward backdrop for a meeting between Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper and her US counterpart Marco Rubio, expected on Wednesday at the G7 foreign ministerial summit in Canada.
A Number 10 spokesman did not deny the move when asked about the pause in intelligence sharing.
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“We don’t comment on security or intelligence matters,” the official said in response to repeated questions.
“The US is our closest partner on defence, security and intelligence, but in line with a long-standing principle, I’m just not going to comment on intelligence matters.”
He added that “decisions on this are a matter for the US” and that “issues around whether or not anything is against international law is a matter for a competent international court, not for governments to determine”.
A Pentagon official told CNN the department “doesn’t talk about intelligence matters”.
On Monday, US secretary of war Pete Hegseth said on X that the previous day, “two lethal kinetic strikes were conducted on two vessels operated by Designated Terrorist Organizations”.
He said: “These vessels were known by our intelligence to be associated with illicit narcotics smuggling, were carrying narcotics, and were transiting along a known narco-trafficking transit route in the Eastern Pacific.
“Both strikes were conducted in international waters and 3 male narco-terrorists were aboard each vessel. All 6 were killed. No U.S. forces were harmed.”
The United Nations human rights chief has described the US strikes on alleged drug dealers off the coast of South America as “unacceptable” and a violation of international human rights law.
Venezuela says they are illegal, amount to murder and are aggression against the sovereign South American nation.
World
Hundreds of Russian troops roll into key frontline Ukrainian city ‘Mad Max-style’, video appears to show
Hundreds of Russian troops have pushed deeper into eastern Ukrainian cities ‘Mad Max-style’, video released by the Russians appears to show.
The troops were seen rolling through the fog on motorbikes, with some on the roofs of battered cars and vans, apparently into the city of Pokrovsk, as Russia said its forces had also pressed further into Kupiansk on Tuesday.
Ukraine has acknowledged the presence of the troops on its territory, although Reuters news agency says that when the video was shot is yet to be verified.
The fight to gain hold of Pokrovsk, a strategic point on a large road and rail artery in the Donetsk region, has been raging for well over a year, in Vladimir Putin’s push to gain control of the whole of Ukraine’s industrial east.
Situation on the battlefield
The Donbas region comprises the neighbouring regions of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Ukraine’s military said around 300 Russian soldiers were now inside Pokrovsk and that Moscow had intensified efforts to get more troops in over the past few days – using dense fog for cover from drones.
It said Ukrainian forces were fighting Russian groups in the city.
Russian soldiers enter Pokrovsk in this screen grab obtained from a social media video released on 10 November, 2025. Pic: Reuters
Moscow says taking Pokrovsk, dubbed “the gateway to Donetsk” by Russian media, would give it a platform to push north towards the two largest remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities in the Donetsk region – Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
Posting on X on Tuesday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said: “The front: our main focus right now is on the Pokrovsk direction and the Zaporizhzhia region, where the Russians are increasing the number and scale of assaults.
“The situation there remains difficult, in part because of weather conditions that favor the attacks. But we continue to destroy the occupier, and I thank every one of our units, every warrior involved in defending Ukraine’s positions.”
Destruction in Pokrovsk on 1 November. Pic: AP
Moscow and Kyiv have given different accounts of the battle for Pokrovsk. Moscow has for days said the city is surrounded, while Kyiv has denied Moscow controls the city and said on Monday that it was still able to supply neighbouring Myrnohrad.
Moscow has been threatening Pokrovsk for more than a year, attempting to surround it and threaten supply lines, rather than use the deadly frontal assaults it used to take the city of Bakhmut in 2023.
Russian war bloggers published a video on Tuesday showing what they said were Russian forces entering Pokrovsk along a road enveloped in fog, in what some Telegram users said looked like scenes from the Mad Max action film series, many of which are set in a post-apocalyptic landscape.
The date of the footage has not been independently verified.
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Satellite image shows armoured vehicles in the eastern Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, on 3 November, 2025. Pic: Reuters
Russia said it had taken 256 buildings and that Moscow’s forces were actively advancing to the northwest and east of Pokrovsk as well as around the railway station.
Russia has executed a pincer movement around the city and was close to closing it, open-source battlefield maps from both sides show, though Kyiv has counter-attacked around the town of Dobropillia.
Ukraine’s top military commander, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in an interview with the New York Post that Russia was concentrating some 150,000 troops in a push to capture Pokrovsk, with mechanised groups and marine brigades forming part of this drive.
Russia said its forces had taken full control of the eastern part of Kupiansk in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region. A Russian commander, who gave his call sign as Hunter, said his troops had taken control of an oil depot on the eastern edge of Kupiansk.
In a video statement issued by Russia’s defence ministry, he said his forces had also taken control of a series of train stops along the railway to Kupiansk Vuzlovyi, a settlement around 6km (4 miles) south of the centre of Kupiansk itself.
Russia also said its troops had taken control of the settlement of Novouspenivske in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine withdrew from some villages, including Novouspenivske, due to intense attacks involving more than 400 artillery strikes per day, RBC-Ukraine news agency cited a military spokesperson as saying.
Russia’s military says it now controls more than 19% of Ukraine, or some 116,000 square km (44,800 square miles), up from 18% nearly three years ago, according to Ukrainian maps tracking frontline changes.
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