Valentine’s Day happens this week, which means you’re seeing hearts everywhere. As a company that focuses on health and safety (and one that has “heart” in our name), we’re very concerned about hearts, though not the ones you’ll see on greeting cards. Nevertheless, we thought we’d take a step away from the usual safety and health topics this time around and take a brief look at the heart as it relates to Valentine’s Day.
How did the heart come to be associated with love, anyway? There is some disagreement on this, but the general consensus is that it came about because feelings of love might make your heart seem to flutter or ‘skip a beat.’ There is perhaps a bit of truth to this, as the excitement of romantic feelings might indeed cause an elevated heart rate, but truth be told, feelings of love actually originate in a specific region of the brain. Try giving your sweetheart an amygdala-shaped box of chocolates and let us know how it goes.
Interestingly, the concept of a broken heart has a basis in fact. A severely emotional event can cause a massive surge of hormones that can do lasting damage. So a ‘broken heart’ can actually lead to a truly broken heart.
If you’ve ever wondered why ‘heart-shaped’ things look nothing like an actual heart, you’re in for even more confusion. Various sources suggest that the heart shape originated from the leaves of the peepal tree, the seeds of the now-extinct silphium plant (used as both an aphrodisiac and a contraceptive, which must have been convenient), pears, pine cones, or (in Japan) the eye of a wild boar, which doesn’t sound very romantic. Still another school of thought insists that the heart symbol is inspired by the shape of female buttocks.
Whichever of those you choose to believe, that shape has been used to represent love since at least the 14th century, and possibly as early as the 1250s, so there’s probably no hope of it ever changing. But that’s fine, because “I love you with all my amygdala” doesn’t have much of a ring to it anyway.
Questions about safety or non-heart-shaped hearts? Contact Heart to Beat.
