Can taking medicine help soothe a 'broken heart' by an ex-lover?

A Montreal researcher said he has found a way to overcome painful feelings after breaking up with his lover by "editing" memory through therapy and using a medicine to treat high blood pressure. .

Dr. Alain Brunet has spent more than 5 years researching post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD ), he has worked with veterans, along with people who have experienced terrorist and criminal attacks.

Many of his studies have focused on developing a method called "memory remodeling , " which is an innovative way to remove painful emotions from a traumatic memory.

Medicines to treat high blood pressure can overcome painful feelings when parting.(Image: Getty Images).

And the key element of his research is the same familiar drug, propranolol . This is a drug that treats common conditions like hypertension and migraines, but after this research, it has another use.

Recalling memories involves the use of propranolol about 1 hour before treatment. During the treatment, the patient will be asked to write down the details of their pain and then they will read it aloud.

"Normally, when you recall old memories, if there are new details, old memories will be released and you can update them. That memory will be saved with new details," Brunet said. Interview with BBC.

The process of recalling the memory creates a window that opens up the emotional climax of that memory.

"We use advanced knowledge about how to form memories and how they are opened, updated and saved again. Basically, we have used the new knowledge recently about gods. to study the patient 's neurotics , " Dr. Brunet said.

His research is often compared to the science fiction film Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind , which tells the story of a couple whose memories are erased. However, Dr. Brunet emphasized that the memory is not lost after the treatment, they just do not make you feel "pain" anymore.

A scene from Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind.(Image: Rex Features)

Memory, neutral and reality elements are stored in the hippocampus of the brain. But emotions are stored in the brain's amygdala.

"Imagine that you are showing a movie in the traditional way, you will have the visual and sound part in two separate transmitters," explained Brunet.

When a person remembers sad memories, they will experience those two channels at once.Propranolol helps to focus on a single channel, which is the emotional channel of memory, which inhibits the re-invocation of the emotional part of the memory and thus no longer makes the patient feel pain.

Recalled memories under the influence of therapy will be "saved" by the brain in a new version with less emotion.

In Dr. Brunet's study, up to 70% of patients felt more relieved after a few sessions of memory-recall therapy.

Dr. Brunet also collaborated with Dr. Roger Pitman, an expert in PTSD research at Harvard University, to work on this therapy.

He recently organized a treatment program in France after the terrorist events in Paris and Nice. His program has trained 200 doctors to treat victims, witnesses and emergency participants.

To date, more than 400 people have undergone this therapy in France under the program.

Dr. Alain Brunet found that propranolol can affect memory.(Image: Getty Images).

After his success with PTSD, Brunet said he wanted to expand the scope of this treatment.

In 2015, Michelle Lonergan, a former student of him at McGill University in Montral, used the method to treat emotional trauma and the memory of betrayal in love.

"If you watch Greek tragedies, where does the pain come from? It's a betrayal," Lonergan said. "They are really things that affect every heart."

He said a tearful breakup can also become very painful and we may feel the same emotional response to the traumatic syndrome of survivors.

Patients who participated in the trial were not under normal circumstances. Selected patients have experienced adultery or abrupt abandonment by a supposedly confidant.

They have struggled with negative emotions and there are people who "cannot move on, cannot overcome this pain," Dr. Brunet said.

"That's what other people often comfort them, but it's no use. But their friends have pinpointed the problem, too."

Dr. Brunet hopes his therapy can also cure obsession and addiction.(Photo: BBC).

The patient is like "stuck in Groundhog Day" , this is a comedy about the main character stuck on 2/2 and this day is repeated. But instead of like the movie, painful emotions are stuck in their minds.

Dr. Brunet and Lonergan found that many patients with "heart wounds" felt relieved after a single treatment.

After five sessions of therapy, when they read aloud the memories of being betrayed, they "expressed the feeling that someone wrote it, not them, like they were reading a novel."

"This treatment is similar to the way that memory works in reality, the same way that we gradually forget our griefs and overcome them," Brunet said.

Brunet's laboratory in Montreal is currently treating about 60 people who have experienced adultery or deceived in a relationship to study a new memory-recall therapy.

Dr. Brunet also said he hopes the applicability of memory arousal therapy will be expanded even more, such as the treatment of obsession, addiction, suffering for various reasons or "any grief." Which comes from an emotional event, " Brunet said.

• Time can heal everything, except for heart wounds