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What's the cure for heartache?

With Valentine's Day just around the corner, the topic of love is on everyone's lips. But what happens if love isn't on the cards for you? This health tip explains why heartache hurts so much and how to get over it.

AuthorSWICA Content Team
3 minutes reading time08. April 2026
Next week is Valentine's Day. The opinions on the day of love, celebrated on 14 February, vary widely, but one thing is clear: the ubiquitous flowers, chocolates and stuffed toys are hard to avoid. It can be a challenging day for people who are currently unlucky in love.

Why do we experience heartache?

Humans are social beings. Relationships and connections to others are essential for survival. This comes down to evolution, because being excluded from a group in the early stages of human development would mean certain death. And many thousands of years later, most people still move within fixed social networks: families, friendships and romantic relationships with others give us stability. If we are rejected or abandoned by these networks, it can have serious effects on our mental and physical health. Grief, frustration, anger or jealousy - all these emotions can be experienced when a relationship breaks down. This is what we call heartache.

What happens in the body during heartache?

Hormones are what are responsible for the emotional rollercoaster. The breakup completely disrupts your hormonal balance: the concentration of dopamine and serotonin, which are responsible for a person's wellbeing, among other things, decreases quite significantly. You become wearier and experience less joy in life. At the same time, your body releases more cortisol, a hormone that can trigger stress, anxiety and dejection if the levels are too high. This new composition of hormones is overwhelming for your body and can result in a wide range of issues: lack of appetite or its opposite, binge eating, sleep disorders or concentrations problems are a few symptoms that typically occur.

Talk about it; distraction and exercise can help

Talking to friends about the breakup and making space for your personal feelings can help create a bit of order in your emotional chaos. Nevertheless, don't mull over your heartache every single day, and consciously do something good for yourself: think of other things when you go for a walk or do something with friends and notice that, despite everything, you can still have fun. This helps you process your feelings. Exercise is generally a miracle cure for heartache. Placing your body under strain improves circulation in your muscles and brain and causes your body to release endorphins, its own painkillers.

Guided online self-help courses for managing psychological conditions

santé24 offers SWICA customers scientifically verified online self-help courses to help them deal with a range of psychological symptoms (please refer to the drop-down list below) of varying severity. Participants can work through the course content anywhere and in their own time and receive written feedback from their personal coach.

For your health: santé24 and SWICA Benecura

Do you have a health question? Our physicians and healthcare professionals at santé24 are available 24/7 on +41 44 404 86 86 for SWICA customers. In addition to telephone health advice, patients whose conditions are appropriate for telemedicine can receive medical services such as diagnostics, treatment, and even e-prescriptions for prescription medications.

Do you feel ill? The SWICA Benecura medical app makes it easy to carry out a digital SymptomCheck. You will receive a personal recommendation about what to do next. Send your information in encrypted form to the santé24 online practice for your telephone consultation to significantly shorten the assessment.

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