We often associate heartbreak as a creative use of words to describe the emotional pain we are feeling but not actually meaning our heart is breaking or for that matter doing anything at all but just beating. However, something amazing as captured on Koby Soto’s FitBit to suggest that actually heartbreak is a legit feeling, that occurs with your heart and not just a phrase to describe an emotion!
Koby Soto is a 28-year-old developer know for creating ‘Guesty’ which is used by the likes of Air BnB as well as being a law student, so a pretty successful all-rounder guy! He used his FitBit like most others to record his sleeping patterns, track his steps and fitness as well as heart rate which was all stored on the linking app as data. According to his personal data, his resting heart beat often averaged a 72 rate beat per minute, which is what he was experiencing the morning of the breakup, whilst he was still calm and relaxed however this all soon changed. When Koby received the heartbreaking phone call from his now ex-girlfriend, his heartbeat immediately jumped up to 88 beats per minute; which was effectively his heart breaking! His heart remained that high for the entirety of that day even reaching a peak of 118 at one point.
In an interview Koby opened up, saying: ‘I feel like it’s nice to have a log of your confirmation of what you felt. You can tell people you have heartbreak and you feel bad. People become less cynical once you show them the numbers or once you show the data or graphs. Everyone understands heartbreak, right? Everyone’s felt it. When you have this, it’s interesting – you have something to show.’ Koby’s story has been shared by thousands but he is the first to have recorded his heart rate at that given moment, which has sparked the attention of lots of medical professionals, leading to an agreed consensus that after a split stress hormones are released that play havoc with the body and create that ‘heartbreak’ feeling.
Dr. Jackson stated that death by heart break was a common occurrence, ‘It seems to happen the next day after the breakup – up to one to two weeks. People start worrying, the adrenaline levels go up, the body goes into “fight or flight mode” and the stress can cause sudden heart attack and death. They go pale, the heart starts beating too fast. When it does that, you have a narrowing of the arteries which is not normally significant, but it comes significant when stressed. Even if you don’t have a heart attack this can cause irregular heartbeat and rapid heart beat. People who have this kind of stress, it’s like putting your heart on cocaine. Stress can even bring on the symptoms of a heart attack even if the arteries aren’t blocked.’
