Have you ever been scared so badly that you grabbed your chest? You feel like someone or something just zapped you behind the sternum. As you rest, you lean against the wall and think about why your friend is such a jerk and why you can feel it in your chest whenever you get scared.

People often use words like “heart-stopping” when they write fiction about fear, but the science of fear tells us that this isn’t what’s happening because it wouldn’t make sense. Our bodies are getting ready to deal with an impending threat when we’re scared, and going into cardiac arrest wouldn’t help us get very far if a lion was after us.

What do we do when we’re scared?
The sympathetic nervous system is what gets you excited when something makes you jump. It’s a tool inside our bodies that releases hormones and changes the way our bodies work to get us ready for the fight-or-flight response.

One important part is adrenaline, which is also known as epinephrine. The adrenal glands squeeze it out into the blood. The heart starts beating faster, sending more blood to your muscles and organs right away. Because they need all the oxygen they can get if they want to get away from a dangerous animal.

How do you feel when you go for a run?
Anyone who has ever used an EpiPen knows how bad it is to feel a sudden rush of adrenaline. It’s a stress hormone that makes you feel nervous and anxious, like you would before doing a bungee jump. Getting a rush when you think about a traumatic event from the past can be a sign of PTSD.

A medicine called adrenaline is used because it can help people who are having a medical emergency. If you have anaphylaxis from an allergen like peanuts, this can help because it can open your airway. Because it changes the strength and speed of heartbeats, it is also sometimes used to help people who are having a cardiac arrest.

When your adrenaline level goes up quickly, you may feel shaky, your heart beat quickly, and your chest get tight. When you add in the fact that you’re more alert, you become very aware of the changes in your body. This is especially clear when you’re not in danger, like when your partner surprised you at home when you thought you were alone.

When you’re scared, your sympathetic nervous system usually kicks in, which is normal. But, some heart conditions can get worse when you’re scared. Should anyone be having chest pain or ongoing discomfort, they should see a doctor. In the end, it is possible to be so scared that you die.

This article is not meant to be a replacement for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment from a trained professional. If you have questions about a medical condition, you should always talk to a qualified health professional.

The family of Henrietta Lacks has filed a new lawsuit against two sizable drug companies for using her genetic material without her consent.
In the US District Court for the District of Maryland, Lacks’ living relatives are suing Novartis Pharmaceuticals Corporation, Novartis Gene Therapies, Inc., Viatris, Inc., and its subsidiary, Mylan Pharmaceuticals. They say the companies have used the “stolen” HeLa cell line to make hundreds of patents and have made a lot of money from it.

The suit wants the money made from using these cells to be “rightfully transferred” to Henrietta Lacks’s estate.

Novartis and Viatris chose to sell Henrietta Lacks’ living genetic material. Lacks was a black grandmother, community leader, and woman whose doctors took her tissue without her knowledge or permission, according to Chris Ayers, an attorney at Seeger Weiss LLP who is representing the Lacks family.
Ayers added, “We will keep looking for justice for Mrs. Lacks and her family.”

Henrietta Lacks died on October 4, 1951, from cervical cancer. She was 31 years old. Some of her cells are still alive today. A doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital took a sample of her cervical cells without her knowledge just before she died. They were doing a cancer check. It was seen that her cells kept multiplying quickly, even after most of the cells in other samples would have died without their host.

Because scientists saw the potential, they found that these cells could be a cheap and easy way to help researchers do more research. The “HeLa immortal cell line” is what scientists call these cells, and they are very useful for biomedical research.

Over 75,000 scientific studies around the world have used these cells, which amount to about 55 million tons. They have been very important in making progress in areas like polio vaccines, cancer treatments, HIV/AIDS treatments, and much more.

All of this was done, though, without Lacks’ knowledge or permission. For many years, her family also didn’t know that the cells were being used for business.
Selling HeLa cells for money brings up important issues in medical ethics and genetics. As a black woman living in America in the 1950s, Lacks’ case shows how medical racism still affects minorities who aren’t getting enough help.

Even though a lot of people know about these problems, HeLa cells are still used in medical research for profit, which makes some companies a lot of money.
“Now that everyone knows Henrietta Lacks’ story, it’s shocking, but not surprising, that drug companies like Novartis and Viatris are still making money off of the deeply unethical origins of HeLa cells and the disturbing history of medical racism,” said Chris Seeger, another lawyer for the family.

A historic deal was made by Lacks’ family in 2023 after they sued Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., another biotech company, in the US District Court for the District of Baltimore. During that time, the lawyers said that the settlement was only the beginning and that there could be many more lawsuits about the use of HeLa cells.

A nationwide study found that after people in England were vaccinated against COVID-19, there were fewer heart attacks and strokes than before. The study took into account risk factors like age. Also, the benefits got better with booster shots and second vaccinations. The study doesn’t completely disprove the idea that vaccinations cause both of these things to happen more often, but it makes the idea incredibly unlikely.

Most people didn’t believe the conspiracy theory that vaccines contain microchips. Instead, people who are against vaccines in general use heart attacks and strokes as their main way of spreading fear. Like all good lies, this one had a little bit of truth to it: A very small number of events, like low platelets, did happen soon enough after vaccination that it was thought likely the AstraZeneca vaccine was to blame. Because of this, the UK only lets people under 40 get Pfizer’s vaccine.

From the start, there was a lot of proof that the virus itself was much more dangerous than any risks from the vaccines. This was still true even when heart attacks and strokes were the only terrible effects of infection that were looked at. Still, the claim that vaccines kill hasn’t gone away. It came up again recently when AstraZeneca said they would stop making their vaccine for a completely different reason.

Some people will not believe any evidence, but a new study from three of the best universities in the UK looked at the deidentified health records of 45.7 million adults in England to put this myth to the test. The information used was from December 8, 2020, up until January 23, 2022. At that time, only a few people in clinical trials had been vaccinated against COVID-19.

There were 10% fewer heart attacks and strokes 13 to 24 weeks after the first dose of either vaccine used in the UK. This includes both types of thromboembolism. A lot of evidence has already been published that supports this, but there has been less research on vaccinations after the first one.

After the second and subsequent doses, arterial thromboses dropped even more compared to people who had not been vaccinated. For the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, they dropped by 20%, and for the AstraZeneca vaccine, they dropped by 27%. Other events, like deep vein thrombosis, have similar outcomes. We need to do more research to find out if this means that the decision not to use AstraZeneca with younger people was a mistake.

With an average of six months between the start of the study and the first vaccination, there were almost 97,000 thrombotic events. Drops like these mean that many lives were saved.

Factors that make the results of studies like these less clear could always come into play. The authors admit that giving the vaccine to the most vulnerable people first may have changed the results in some way. However, the odds against this other explanation must be astronomically high.

“We looked at the relationship between COVID-19 vaccines and cardiovascular disease in almost 46 million adults in England. We found that the risk of common cardiovascular diseases like heart attacks and strokes was the same or lower after each vaccination compared to before or without vaccination,” said Dr. Samantha Ip of the University of Cambridge in a statement. “This study adds to the growing body of proof that the COVID-19 vaccination program works and is safe. It has been shown to protect against severe COVID-19 and save millions of lives around the world.”

The study confirmed that the rises in myocarditis and pericarditis that were seen soon after getting the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine and the cases of thrombotic thrombocytopenia from AstraZeneca were real but very uncommon. Also, they were usually only allowed for four weeks or less after getting a shot. On the other hand, severe cardiovascular disease rose after the COVID-19 infection. The authors aren’t sure if COVID-19 prevention is the real reason for the drop in cardiovascular events, but it seems like the most logical conclusion.

Not getting vaccinated because you are afraid of getting myocarditis or a similar disease is like not wearing a seatbelt because of a few cases where one caught someone, ignoring the benefits that have been shown.

“This England-wide study gives patients reassurance of the cardiovascular safety of the first, second, and booster doses of COVID-19 vaccines,” said professor William Whitely of the University of Edinburgh, who helped write the study. It shows that the benefits of second and booster doses, which include a lower risk of heart attacks and strokes after vaccination, are greater than the very small risks of these problems.

The study is available to everyone in the journal Nature Communications.