[click on image above to jump to journal article detailing brain-heart interactions]

According to a just released report in Japan by the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Labor, nearly 150 people lost their lives in 2006 to Karoshi.

Karoshi is a Japanese term for "death from overwork".

Back in the 1980s, when several high-ranking business executives who were still in their prime years suddenly died without any previous sign of illness, the media began picking up on what appeared to be a new phenomenon. This new phenomenon was quickly labeled kar?shi. [Wikipedia]

According to this article:

Because of peer pressure to keep up with co-workers, out-do competing groups and increase market-share at the expense of competitors, hundreds of thousand of Japanese managers are caught up in a vortex of psychological pressure that forces them to work at a frenzied pace.

Is this possible? Can you suddenly die from overworking? Absolutely. Severe stress can in fact trigger cardiac arrhythmias, heart attacks, and strokes. Over the years, many of the younger stroke patients I’ve consulted on in the hospital give a history of severe stress in the days leading up the stroke.

In the last decade we’ve learned that strong emotions and stress activate specific brain regions which in turn directly influence cardiac rate and rhythm via the autonomic nervous system. A very nice review of this topic (full text & free PDF) can be found here. It’s entitled: Brain-Heart Interactions. The neurocardiology of arrhythmia and sudden cardiac death. A diagram from the article illustrating the anatomic brain-heart connections is shown above.

We therefore have a mechanism by which ethereal emotions can have a concrete, injurious effect on heart tissue.

Unfortunately, as this world gets increasingly competitive, more and more people are getting desperate and having to work harder and harder to achieve success. Thus we have up to 25% of college students using stimulants, and are starting to see the 70-hour work week become the new standard.

Reference for above Brain-Heart article: Tex Heart Inst J. 1993; 20(3): 158–169.

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