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Grief can ravage your mind, but science shows it can also weaken your body, leaving you more vulnerable to illness.

"As humans, we are strongly motivated to seek out social bonds that are warm, dependable, friendly and supportive," explained George Slavich, who directs the Laboratory for Stress Assessment and Research at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA.

"Losing someone close to us terminates that bond and the social and physical protection they provided, which historically could have put the body at an increased risk of physical danger," he added in a UCLA article.

Much of that danger comes from a hypervigilant, but in some ways weakened, immune system.

As Slavich explained, after the loss of a loved one, your brain and body react as if they've lost a key line of defense. The immune system escalates its wound-healing capabilities (priming for potential threats) but at the same time lowers its guard against viruses.

That's why folks are vulnerable to colds and flu when they're hit by grief or other stressors, Slavich noted.

Bodily inflammatory responses also rise, he added, and that can lead to "feelings of sickness, fatigue, loss of pleasure and social and behavioral withdrawal."

Grief can show up physically in ways people don't always expect, wrote Heidi Horsley, a licensed psychologist and adjunct professor at Columbia University, in an article for Open to Hope, a podcast she co-hosts.

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