Voodoo death is death caused by emotional distress, often related to a curse or omen, which can result in a drop in blood pressure leading to death. It is a real phenomenon and can occur in any culture. Cases of voodoo death are more common than people think and can be caused by conditions such as takotsubo cardiomyopathy or fear of death.
Voodoo death is a term invented by a physiologist named Walter Cannon whose main work was on the body’s fight-or-flight response. Cannon’s explanation of the phenomenon was only partially correct, but later studies would show that psychosomatic death is entirely possible and occurs in certain situations. The idea behind voodoo death is that a person can be so afraid of something that they kill themselves from the stress of encountering that fear. Even though “voodoo” is used in the name, any fear or shock from any culture can cause this condition.
The undeniable efficacy of curses and omens has often been observed in a variety of cultures. Under special circumstances, a person will receive a curse or a bad omen and then die just as if the curse or omen had achieved the desired effect. This type of death, of course, is almost never scientifically attributed to magic or actual curses. Rather, this phenomenon is usually what is known as voodoo death.
Simply put, voodoo death is death caused by emotional distress. This stress is related to a stimulus, often a curse or omen, but occasionally just shocking news. According to Cannon, the power of this stress is so great that it causes the individual to have a drop in blood pressure which ultimately results in death. The mechanism by which blood volume is lost was not fully understood by Cannon in his time, but later scientists have proposed a more comprehensive explanation involving hormones and other physical processes which were discovered after Cannon’s research .
Close cases of voodoo death can actually happen more often than most people think. For example, some people suffer from a condition called takotsubo cardiomyopathy, which can cause heart failure in the face of extreme anxiety or heartbreak. This particular ailment, however, does not always lead individuals to death, even though they can become very ill. Cases like this, where the patient doesn’t die, are much harder to identify.
There have been other cases where fear of death has caused death. For example, in 1992 a man who was erroneously told that he was dying of cancer died from a fear of dying of cancer, as it was later established that he was free of the disease. In one sense, it might make more sense to say that a person experiencing voodoo death wants to die themselves. This is why this type of death is so often called psychosomatic, as it is so real to the individual that it actually causes the symptoms.
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