What happened

On January 29th, 2025, my cardiologist looked at me and said, "Your left descending artery — the LAD — is 80% blocked." Neither of us expected those results.

Not from someone who used to be an athlete, had spent years working with professional athletes, had built recovery products to prevent injury, and had studied the human body across two continents. I had a science background. I ate clean. I trained like a maniac almost every day. I genuinely thought I was doing everything I was supposed to do to stay healthy.

But somehow, clearly, I wasn't healthy. And somehow I didn't take care of the most vital organ in the body — my own heart.

It was evident that I missed something happening inside myself — not because I wasn't intelligent, not because I wasn't disciplined or sedentary, but because I was internally disconnected.

I thought I could keep pushing through stress — that it was normal. I was raised in a very stressful environment by a former athlete who taught me to push through anything in life, so I acted like I was unstoppable and became an athlete too. I never stopped. I thought it was normal to keep on going. I thought my training regimen was perfectly fine, because that's what athletes do. I thought my age and my knowledge protected me 100% from any kind of illness, especially heart blockage.

I've learned that information and awareness are not the same thing.

Looking back, my body was communicating with me many times. I was just too busy to listen. I remember a few times I would have a strong cramp — right in my upper ribs, next to my heart — when I would argue with my husband, or when there was too much going on with my business, too many responsibilities on my plate, too much pressure. Yes, in that moment I paused and I would say, "Ok, it is just stress."

I put pressure on myself to perform better, to achieve more, to be stronger, to keep on going — to be seen by the people who made me feel like I wasn't good enough, so I would please them and never disappoint them. I would be there solving everyone else's problems and stepping further away from myself. That was simply how I operated — the one who was ok and who could handle anything. I had spent my life in pressure, never in presence. That's what got me.

What I changed

I started to look at things from a completely different perspective. I looked at everything I ate under a microscope. I read every label because one day, while looking at a jar of olives, I realized there was canola and sunflower oil — I could not believe how deceptive labels can be, even when containing healthy foods. The environment matters, and I started to look deeply into mine. Because I genuinely believed I was eating healthy, I started to pay attention to all synergies, including those between ingredients and between what I was doing and how I was doing it.

Instead of pushing and training so hard, I started paying attention to the flow of my movement. Instead of running, I started walking more and listening to music that brought a real, vibrating joy to my body. I shifted how I processed stress — what stress meant to me and how I dealt with it.

For the first time in my life, I actually started to connect with myself. From the moment I woke up.

Eleven months later, I redid the test. What showed up shocked my cardiologist.

Why?

Because this isn't just the story of what happened to my heart. It's the story of everything I blocked from myself before my heart finally forced me to pay attention.

Why it happened

Have you ever wished you could take a break from yourself?

I did — the day I learned my artery was 80% blocked, I realized the blockage hadn't started there. It had started many, many years earlier, and I had an opportunity to change that. I had to change what was living in my mind. My thoughts, my beliefs, my boundaries — all of it had to become part of my daily medicine. Yes, I did not want medication. I refused. I learned too much about the negative effects of statins, and genuinely, I knew that if I put myself in that situation, I could take myself out of it. That was my personal decision, made in conversation with my doctor — it's not medical advice, and it's not the right path for everyone. I know we cannot change our genes, but we can change how we live with them.

I wanted to own the narrative. I stopped asking why me, and started asking what is this trying to teach me? One day — I will never forget — I was sitting in my car one afternoon, completely exhausted. Not physically, emotionally. I remember thinking, why am I so tired? I had slept. I had eaten. I had exercised. And then it hit me.

"I don't need a vacation. I need a different relationship with myself."

Nobody had taught me that every time I betrayed myself, I created friction. That every time I ignored my intuition, I moved further away from myself. That every time I chased approval, I gave someone else the authority to define my worth. Every time I stayed quiet, my voice became smaller.

Right then, it started to sink in — my artery wasn't the first thing that became blocked. It was my voice.

What my dad's quadruple bypass taught me

When my dad told me stress was the biggest contributor to his quadruple bypass, I realized I had inherited more than his genes. I had inherited his relationship with stress.

Looking back, I don't believe there was one single reason my artery became blocked. My family history mattered. My stressful on-the-go lifestyle mattered. My nutrition and the synergy among the nutrients I consumed mattered. And I deeply believe the way I carried stress, pressure, and all my responsibilities became a big part of the story too. As I shared above, I can't change my genes — but I can change how I live with them.

Today, it is clear to me that we inherit more than genes. We inherit our parents' and society's beliefs. We inherit coping mechanisms from those around us. We inherit their silence. We inherit their fear. We inherit the ways we carry pressure.

What denial sounded like

The first word that came to mind when I heard "eighty percent blocked" wasn't fear.

100% denial and blame.

That's not me. There must be a mistake. Is this because of my father? Maybe it was the elbow surgery that blocked my heart artery — that's probably what did it. Someone, please, explain to me why this happened.

I looked at everything that had happened to me before, just to avoid myself.

So what did my body already know, long before my mind could admit it?

That I was disconnected. That I kept looking outside myself for something, anything, to blame — playing the victim instead of taking the chance to actually know myself, to understand why I act the way I do. Does it serve me? Does it serve my heart?

I wasn't just recovering from a blocked artery. I was recovering from 43 years of conditioning.

Forty-three years of ego. Forty-three years of labels I let other people hand me and mistook for my identity. Letting go of that — that's when I realized I was lucky. Lucky to wake up. Lucky to get the chance to change the way I had been living inside my own body.

The questions that changed everything

Don't you think that something changes when our thoughts leave our heads and land on paper? If you're on your own healing journey, I want you to sit with these the way I did.

Maybe your heart has been trying to tell you something for years, just like mine. Have you been listening? I hadn't been listening to mine for a very long time. And it cost me almost my life.

Maybe healing begins the day we stop abandoning ourselves and start listening without judgment.

Questions I wish someone had asked me

Looking back, there are questions I wish someone had put in front of me on day one — some for my cardiologist, some for the nurse who rejected the tests that later showed an 80% blockage, and some for myself. I'm sharing them here so you don't have to wait as long as I did to ask them.

The greatest gift my heart blockage gave me was finally meeting myself

I realized that you cannot heal your heart while staying at war with yourself. You know that, right?

Before we act on anything in life — any decision, any conversation with a partner, a friend, a coworker — there is presence before action. It does not just happen in sports.

I hope you give yourself some grace and meet yourself with kindness.
Take care of your heart — because nobody can do it better than you.