Matthew McConaughey's parents always had a stormy relationship, during the course of which they divorced and married each other thrice.
Editor's note: This article was originally published on November 8, 2022. It has since been updated.
We tend to idolize our parents' relationship growing up and in many ways, their relationship sets the tone for our future relationships as well. So, if we saw our parents in a good marriage, we would have the foundation for building one for ourselves as adults.
Actor Matthew McConaughey revealed something quite personal recently while talking about his new memoir Greenlights. He revealed that his father, James Donald McConaughey, died in 1992 and he had predicted how he would go.
"I got a call from my Mom. 'Your dad died,'" McConaughey writes, according to Vanity Fair. "My knees buckled. I couldn’t believe it. He was my dad. Nobody or nothing could kill him. Except for mom. He’d always told me and my brothers, 'Boys, when I go, I’m gonna be makin' love to your mother.' And that’s what happened. He had a heart attack when he climaxed."
The Magic Mike actor further said that his parents, James and Kay, always had a stormy relationship and they kept breaking up and getting back together. They divorced multiple times and married each other multiple times too. "Those moments were so quickly superseded by the love and humanity," he said, adding, "They were, at times, violent. As I say in the book, that is how they communicated. They were divorced twice, married three times, I mean, yeah, it was like the Pacific Ocean in a storm."
The True Detective actor revealed in January 2020 that he set up his 88-year-old mother with the widowed father of his The Gentleman co-star, Hugh Grant. In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, the actor said, "His father’s 91, my mother’s 88. Yeah, why not? Next week, they’re supposed to meet, and we probably won’t see them for the rest of the night." That is one loving son!
What happened to his father is not unheard of, but why does that happen?
The simple answer is that intercourse increases the heart rate. "Any physical activity will elevate your heart rate—whether you are swimming, running, or having sex, and your risk for a heart attack increases whenever your heart rate is elevated," Florida-based cardiologist Dr.Leonard Pianko tells Health. But that's not all. Intercourse also increases adrenaline levels as does heart rate and blood pressure.
It is like going through "stress tests," which is done to find underlying heart problems, explained Dr. Victoria Shin, a cardiologist with Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, California. "Sexual activity is a form of ‘stress testing,’ and if someone has underlying heart disease that is undiagnosed, it can manifest as symptoms of chest pain or in the worst-case scenario, cause a heart attack or sudden cardiac death," she added.
While it's a possibility that people have a heart attack during or after intercourse, it's very rare, even among those who have a previous history of heart disease, according to a 2017 study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. "If you have a blockage to your heart and you overexert yourself both physically and emotionally, it may in rare instances precipitate a heart attack," Dr. Pianko said.
A person's overall health also plays a big role in this situation. "For a healthy 50-year-old man, the risk of having a heart attack in any given hour is about one in a million," Dr, Shin says. "Sexual activity doubles the risk, but it's still just two in a million."
It's even rarer for a woman to have a heart attack during intercourse. So, unless your doctor says that you shouldn't indulge in physical intimacy, there is no reason to stop, unless you want to.
References:
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/10/matthew-mcconaughey-father-death-sex-greenlights-memoir
https://www.health.com/condition/heart-disease/matthew-mcconaughey-dad-death
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0735109717397607?via%3Dihub
