What the heart feels can be deadly

Happy Valentines to everyone! I hate to sound like a Valentine Grinch but this is one day any sane person would choose to stay home. People go crazy, it’s SRO at theaters, restaurants and the traffic is horrible specially around motel driveways. I have already put an eternal curse on the smart ass who thought of using the feast day of a saint of questionable sainthood, to sell more chocolates, roses, high priced dinners, condoms and motel rooms.

As a New York Times writer puts it “there is something kind of pathetic about having to designate a day to be good to your mate. Still, we dutifully participate in this mass ritual of public devotion, paying extra for the prix fixe while packed elbow to elbow with others when it would be way more romantic to have a great restaurant mostly to ourselves the next night.”

I checked it out and nothing really justifies the frenzy of February 14. Well, it is the birthday of Kris Aquino and Juan Ponce Enrile but I doubt if that would generate a romantic mood for most of us.

As for St. Valentine, his sainthood and even his existence are under question. It is uncertain, according to Wikipedia, whether St. Valentine is one saint or more saints of the same name. “For this reason this liturgical commemoration was not kept in the Catholic calendar of saints for universal liturgical veneration as revised in 1969.” Hmm… St. Valentine is apparently like Santa Claus… more venerated at the malls than in churches.

According to Wikipedia, Valentine’s Day was an attempt to supersede the pagan holiday of Lupercalia, a fertility festival in ancient Rome. It was supposed to be a rite of spring where young women would place their names in a big urn and bachelors would choose a name and become paired with one of the women. They didn’t have Facebook in those days.

Then again, Wikipedia informs us that in France and England in those days, it was believed that February 14th was the beginning of birds’ mating season – a good reason to make this a day for romance. That may be good in those days when the population was small and constantly decimated by war and disease. But it isn’t a very good idea today when we are in the billions and are f—king ourselves to extinction by overusing earth’s resources and causing global warming. What we urgently need is the Rh bill to be passed by Congress.

As anyone who has followed the adventures of Shrek and Fiona would tell you, matters of the heart aren’t always all fun and games. Nothing is more depressing than a broken heart.

But science has come to our rescue. To medical professionals today, it is all about chemical reactions in our brains. It seems the right chemicals can make us feel romantic. That must be what we mean about having or lacking chemistry with someone we think could be special. Now science gave us a good excuse for acting silly on this day. Blame chemistry!

It is all about endorphin… dopamine… serotonin. “The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress. Endorphins are released which prevent nerve cells from releasing more pain signals.” Love, after all, can be painfully stressful… not to mention expensive.

That’s how the Valentine practice of giving chocolates probably started. There is supposedly scientific research showing that chocolate causes an endorphin rush. No wonder chocolate is probably the most popular endorphin-producing food on earth. The production of endorphins is believed to contribute to the renowned “inner glow” experienced by dedicated chocolate lovers even before an orgasm.

Moving on, you probably will also want to treat your significant other to a meal with a lot of chili peppers because chilies are said to provide a stimulating heat and “bite” that increases the body’s production of endorphins. Many popular ethnic foods, including Tex-Mex, Mexican, Cajun, Indian, Chinese (especially Szechuan) and Thai, are renowned for their spiciness, and the resulting endorphin rush is supposed to enhance what many hope will happen during phase two of a Valentine date, according to my Google search.

If endorphins are the only chemicals our brains ever have to deal with, we will probably be celebrating Valentines Day all year round. Unfortunately, life isn’t quite like that. There are other chemicals that control our moods and affect our view of life and the world. Changes in the serotonin levels in the brain, for instance, can alter moods.

And that brings me to the dreaded “d” word… what we feel when we fall out of love or mope around with unrequited love. That’s when love can become deadly as the chemical balance in our brains go haywire. But it isn’t a problem a pill can’t cure.

Time magazine reports that researchers are peering at the chemistry of the working mind with computerized scanners. Molecular biologists are beginning to map abnormal behavior to specific strands of DNA. This has led to a growing consensus among scientists that dysfunctions like depression — are at their core disruptions of normal brain chemistry and can often be treated as such. Sometimes, buying a third hand Porsche 911 can be as effective as popping a Prozac, specially if you have an attractive stockbroker from a German bank beside you.  

And by tracing the action of drugs like Prozac for depression, scientists can link moods and feelings to the action of certain chemicals in the brain. Then again, getting one’s hands on a bullet proof Lexus SUV can also mimic the positive moods and feelings scientists normally attribute to the effect of certain chemicals on the brain, specially if the Lexus is just borrowed.

I once wrote a column on depression at the instance of Dr. Ricky Soler, a psychiatrist who could be mistaken as his patient. Severe depression is a serious malady, Dr. Ricky explains. It afflicts scions of hacienderos as well as our OFWs working as domestics in Hong Kong. Dr Ricky explains that clinical depression is more than just sadness or lovesickness. It is something that a trained psychiatrist should deal with and not left to develop into a life threatening situation.

Dr. Ricky says it is good to know that depression is not a form of insanity (never mind if you feel insanely in love) but rather a disease like diabetes or TB. But depression could be a life and death emergency, Dr. Ricky warns, and any pressure could be a strong trigger. People must be made aware that desperate as they may feel, there are options available short of ending it all.

The popular Dr. Deepak Chopra elaborates on that point: “We speak of depression and anxiety as disorders, not as curses or as signs of sin. In the aftermath of trauma we don’t ask why God wanted to punish us; we cope through therapy, either talking to a professional or taking a pill. Thus the doctor has replaced the priest as first choice for dispelling the darkness when it descends.”

Well… what science now knows about our emotions and our minds may have advanced tremendously. But it still doesn’t change the fact that what the heart feels can be deadly.

Romeo and Juliet took their own lives because what their hearts felt wasn’t one that their society would allow. Last week, Angie Reyes put a bullet through his heart because he was depressed and also probably because he loved his family so much, specially his wife, he didn’t want to put them through what he was going through.

Romeo and Juliet probably wouldn’t have been helped by modern psychiatry but I think Angie Reyes might have been. The lesson I see for all of us is to be acutely aware of the onset of depression on our loved ones and seek immediate medical help.

Let us not forget amidst all the chocolates and chilies we are pumping into our bodies to give us an endorphin high this Valentine’s Day, that there is another side to what the heart feels and we have to be careful because that other side can be deadly.

Before I get killed myself for forgetting, Happy Valentines Therese!

Despite the absence of card, gift and dinner, I remembered. And it’s the thought that counts.

Valentine thoughts

Rosan Cruz shares with us her Valentine’s dilemma.

A woman has only two choices in life.

1) to be SINGLE and look for a husband every DAY; or

2) to get MARRIED and look for her husband every NIGHT.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected].