Scared to death

Earlier this year, Larry Emanuel Whitfield of Charlotte, North Carolina broke into a woman's home and literally scared her to death. Mary Parnell, 79, died of a fear- and stress-induced heart attack. Scientific American asked Martin A. Samules, chairman of the neurology department at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, to weigh in on the story.

From Scientific American:

How does that (someone get scared to death)?
The body has a natural protective mechanism called the fight-or-flight response, which was originally described by Walter Cannon [chairman of Harvard University's physiology department from 1906 to 1942]. If, in the wild, an animal is faced with a life-threatening situation, the autonomic (involuntary) nervous system responds by increasing heart rate, increasing blood flow to the muscles, dilating the pupils, and slowing digestion, among other things. 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...

What other emotional states besides fear could lead to these fatal heart rhythms? Any strong positive or negative emotions such as happiness or sadness. There are people who have died in intercourse or in religious passion. There was a case of a golfer who hit a hole in one, turned to his partner and said, "I can die now"—and then he dropped dead. A study in Germany found an increase of sudden cardiac deaths on the days that the German soccer team was playing in the World Cup. For about seven days after the 9/11 terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon there was an increase of sudden cardiac death among New Yorkers.

Can a person be scared to death?

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