Is It Possible to be Scared to Death?
We have all heard the saying, “you scared me to death” and have all experienced those gut-wrenching moments when you are scared. But is it really possible to die from a traumatic event? Can a scary moment actually KILL you?
In extremely rare instances, you can be scared so bad, that it will actually cause your death. ASAP Science states, “When a person is frightened by something, his body’s fight or flight response kicks in. Adrenaline is released, which makes the heart beat more quickly, sending more blood to the muscles.” How our body reacts to this is what is interesting. The person who is now frightened gets “super strength” and “super speed” so to call. They will also experience the psychological term we refer to as “fight or flight” which has side effects such as dilation of your pupils, reduced speed of your digestion, along with other symptoms.
Neurologist Martin A. Samuels told Scientific American in 2009 states, “All of this increases the chances of succeeding in a fight or running away from, say, an aggressive jaguar. This process certainly would be of help to primitive humans, but the problem, of course, is that in the modern world there is very limited advantage of the fight-or-flight response. There is a downside to revving up your nervous system like this.”
Usually in this fight or flight, your reactions and change in your body are only for a duration of time, not forever. When someone is continually scared, though, and the strain on your heart from a fight or flight response, this can turn into a situation that will be toxic towards your heart. When you are scared you experience a rush of adrenaline, which inhibits the relaxation of your muscles. If you experience an excessive amount of these symptoms, you can actually die. You can see more in depth information on the topic here. Also check out this youtube video on the exact same topic.
So when you hear the saying, “you scared me to death” next time, remember that this is possible, and if this person is elderly or experiencing it in excessive amounts, make sure you take it easy on them.
scare is one of the most primitive feeling of human. it’s a protection for you when you encounter danger situation. Your brain will stop the blood at some part of the body, and secret more adrenaline to help you become faster and stronger. However, you heart rate will get higher either. To someone has a heart related disease it’s just a death call. So of course, people will scare to die.
What a cool blog! I didn’t realize how someone can actually be scared to death. I also like how you incorporated the fight or flight principle into this. I remember learning about this in psychology and its crazy how our body reacts to stress or fear. Its also interesting how this pretty much is based off of heart health. There could even be a young person you’re scaring that ends up getting hurt because of heart health.
This was a very interesting post. I liked how you explained what happens during the “fight or flight” response to a scary/high risk situation. I never knew that it was possible for someone to die because they have so much adrenaline rushing trough their body. It was interesting to read that elderly people where at a higher risk to die because of the “fight or flight” response. Good Job, very interesting topic!
I found your topic quite interesting, because I know of many instances when I get scared or claim “someone scared me to death” and mainly at that moment I experience one response and my whole body jumps. I did some digging on the topic and did you know that animals experience the similar response that we do when we are scared to death? This may be good to add to your argument, and explain the different circumstances of Zoo animals with human’s responses. Check out this article: http://io9.com/5919137/the-science-of-being-scared-to-death
Overall, great topic and blog!
This is a very interesting concept to think about. I really liked how you explained the ‘fight or flight’ reaction humans have when experiencing high risk, or scary situations. I think that to make your argument, that we can be scared to death, stronger, you should have included a case in which this has happened. Someone who has died and the cause of death was fright. I could not find a case on a human after just briefly looking, but I did find this study on a pine mouse, http://siarchives.si.edu/blog/scared-death-curious-case-pine-mouse
You’ve made some good points here. I had no idea that you could literally be scared to death and that it mostly depends on heart health. But I would have like to have seen some statistics of just how many people die per year or maybe some studies that were conducted in an experiment of people who have healthy hearts and another group who’s hearts aren’t considered healthy from a medical standpoint. Then put into adrenaline pumping situations to see how their bodies react to such.
A Japanese doctor evaluated this possibility as he noticed a few young health patients who had symptoms of stress or fear coming in with what looked like a heart attack. One of the chambers of the heart was distended in all of these people when their hearts were evaluated. Stress or fear causes the heart to beat at a faster rate because fear or stress impulses are sent to the heart. If one’s heart rate became higher than their body could handle they could have a heart attack, thus be killed by fear. http://io9.com/5919137/the-science-of-being-scared-to-death
This is a very interesting topic, and it is very possible for someone to die of fear. The most prominent reason is from, as stated above, the body’s fight or flight neurotransmitter. One specific case that would really add to your blog is that of 20-year-old Larry Whitfield. He allegedly broke into and hid in 79-year-old Mary Parnell’s home, and got charged with first-degree-murder. However, he never actually made physical contact with Parnell, she underwent a heart-attack caused by terror. Her body went into fight-or-flight mode, and due to her old age and weak physical ailments, her body shut down.
Check out the case here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/scared-to-death-heart-attack/
This is interesting because I’ve heard of incidents where people we’re so scared that it caused them to have a heart attack, I thought this was just due to old age. However, I didn’t know that there have been deaths due to adrenalin being released in our body as a result of being frightened. All this information is a bit concerning and makes me realize people should be more conscious of who they play pranks on or try to scare.