What becomes of the broken hearted who had love that’s now departed?” asked Jimmy Ruffin in his 1960s hit song. Nearly 50 years later researchers in Australia may have the answer — a broken heart can kill you.

The team from Sydney Medical School monitored 80 recently bereaved adults in the most comprehensive study of its type ever undertaken. As well as the sort of findings you would expect — increases in anxiety and depression, poor sleep and loss of appetite — they also recorded a number of physiological changes that increase the risk of a heart attack.

When compared with a controlled group of people who hadn’t lost anyone close to them, the bereaved showed significant increases in blood pressure, pulse rate and changes to their immune and clotting systems, which made their blood stickier and a heart attack more likely. The changes were most marked during the first six months after bereavement and have been pounced on by the media as the first scientific explanation of why surviving partners often die so soon after their loved ones.

The Australian study may be ground-breaking but the link between emotional upset and physical wellbeing is nothing new — researchers have been looking into it for decades. Indeed, there is even a life-event rating scale that can be used to assess the likelihood of future ill health. Known as the Holmes-Rahe Life Event Scale, it was devised more than 40 years ago and rates life events in order of their likely impact on your wellbeing.

At the bottom of the scale are taking a holiday, Christmas and getting a ticket for speeding, which score 13, 12 and 11 points respectively. At the other end of the scale are redundancy, divorce and death of a spouse, which score 47, 73 and 100 points. If you tot up the score of your life events in the past two years then it is supposed to predict your likelihood of illness. Go to: virtualpsychology.co.uk/ holmes.php and work out your score. If it’s 0-150 then you are at low risk; 151-299 moderate risk; 300 or more high risk.

In reality the relationship between stressful life events and ill health is far more difficult to predict. Although a number of studies have validated the Holmes and Rahe scale, a high score doesn’t necessarily mean that you are going to succumb to an illness, and a low score doesn’t mean you are going to sail through the next few years.

To put it another way, I can think of a number of patients of mine who have died soon after they have lost a spouse, but I can also think of just as many who have gone on to live long and fulfilling lives after losing a partner. The Australian research is interesting, but would be the least of my concerns if I had just lost my wife.

Another related area that has attracted a lot of interest recently is the link between stressful life events and cancer.

It is now possible to identify changes in the immune system that occur as the result of stress that may predispose us to cancer and/or encourage its spread and development in those who already have the disease. But it has proven surprisingly hard to demonstrate that this link has a tangible effect outside the lab.

Studies looking at the relationship with stress and the risk of developing cancer have produced conflicting results and have yet to identify a direct cause and effect relationship (although it has come closest with virus-induced cancers such as some types of lymphoma).

And there is a similar dearth of evidence when it comes to life events of a person’s chances of surviving a cancer. It may seem counterintuitive to suggest that stress makes no difference to a woman’s odds of recovery from breast cancer, but that is the conclusion from the latest research. According to the study by Cancer Research UK even stressors such as domestic violence, debt and losing the family home do not increase the likelihood of recurrences in the five years after initial treatment.

The latest research also suggests that a positive frame of mind has little or no influence on the final outcome — people with stiff upper lips are no more likely to survive than those who crumple under the emotional and physical strain of cancer. A reassuring finding — particularly for the broken-hearted.

E-mail questions to: drmark@thetimes.co.uk or write to times2, 1 Pennington Street, London E98 1TT