Love a bane to health?

The highs and lows of romance comes with a range of physical reactions which could make people sick and unwell.

Love is said to be the most blissful experience for an individual, but this constellation of emotions is not that pleasurable when it comes to health.

A new research has suggested that being in love does make people sick and unwell.

According to researchers at Imperial College London, the highs and lows of romance cause a range of physical reactions like dilation of eyes, sweating of palms and increase in heart rate.

"Love has some obvious physical effects," the Telegraph quoted Professor Martin Cowie, as saying.

"Pupils dilate, palms become sweaty and the heart rate increases. Large amounts of adrenaline are running through our system which does cause problems," he added.

Cowie says that stress related illnesses at work cropped up from near-identical physical phenomena.

"We have seen a big rise in people complaining of flu-like symptoms over a long period of time," he said. He added that the helplessness to acknowledge the effects of emotion on our health makes things worse.

Prof Cowie, who has been studying the effect of emotions on humans, added that there is evidence that the loss of love can increase the risk of heart problems and death.

"We know, for instance, that newly widowed men have a 50 per cent higher chance of serious heart problems," Cowie said.