Your heart doesn’t distinguish between intentional cold exposure and accidental hypothermia, it just responds to the physiological stress.

More research is needed on cold drink heart to potentially uncover the mechanism causing it, Gould says. Then, it may be possible to develop medications to prevent afib episodes for this population.

In the 1950s, open-heart surgery had a 50 percent mortality rate. Today it is less than 1 percent. Jean-Sebastien Evrard/AFP via STAT News My heart was breaking, but not from lost love.