Listener supported WNYC Studios.

This is Science Friday.

I'm Flor Lichten.

Today on the podcast, why grief hurts.

It is our body's way of absorbing this blow and just telling us, hey, we're taking on a little

extra load here as we're trying to understand what's happening in this new world where your loved one

isn't with you. We have all these expressions to describe the pain of loss. Heartache, a broken heart,

a punch in the gut. I think of them as figures of speech, but my next guest says it's not so

simple. Grief is an emotional experience, but it's also a physical one. Studies show that grief can change your physiology. Here with me is Dr. Mary Francis O'Connor, professor of clinical psychology and psychiatry at the University of Arizona. She's also the author of a new book, The Grieving Body, that looks at the physiological effects of grief. Mary Frances, welcome back to Science Friday.

It's so nice to be here, Flora.

So a few years back, you were on the show talking about your previous book, The Grieving Brain.

When was it clear to you that, yeah, there is enough science to write a whole other book on the grieving body?

It's funny. I've been studying the

reaction to loss, you know, just that natural grief response in the brain, but also the body for,

gosh, 25 years now. And as I was writing the grieving brain, I thought I would put all the information all in one book.

And then I realized, wait, I think there's a whole other book in here.

I'm not going to have room.

So it got transformed into two books.

The second book, The Grieving Body, is about the research on cardiovascular and immune responses we have in grieving.

Let's get into the science. I mean, when you're grieving, you know, many of us know,

you feel it in your heart, it physically hurts. What's actually happening?

We don't often realize that grief is a physiological response as well as an emotional one. And I think the research

...