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Lala Anthony revealed that she had a serious matter of the heart to address earlier this year. The POWER star told Self that found out she had premature ventricular contractions in her heart, which caused an abnormally fast heartbeat, that called for her to heart surgery in June 2021.
She said her heart always had a fast heartbeat but she never thought it was because of an underlying health issue.
“I felt my heart racing all the time, but because it’s all I ever really knew, I didn’t even know that it was necessarily something wrong,” Anthony said. “I just thought, ‘Oh, you just feel your heart racing sometimes because you’re working too much, you haven’t slept, you’re stressed.’”
Her family pleaded with her one day to seek medical attention because she looked pale, was lightheaded and was sweating. Her heart was racing but she didn’t want to go to the hospital but was encouraged by her 14-year-old son Kiyan to go. After EMTs took her the hospital she had to have an emergency heart procedure to address her abnormal heart rhythm. The 39-year-old had to undergo a cardiac ablation, “which uses radiofrequency heat or extreme cold to destroy the part of the heart causing an abnormal heartbeat.” Anthony described the surgery as scary and said she even had to be awake for a portion of the surgery. During the procedure, a catheter is inserted through the groin into the heart.
The PVC was first pointed out while Anthony was filming BH90210 in Vancouver in 2019 when a doctor became concerned about her heart rate. After deciding not to allow the doctor to send her to an emergency room there, she visited her doctor in New York City and had an electrocardiogram (EKG) performed which revealed that she was having “about 25 percent more heartbeats over the course of the day than the average person.”
“Within a 24-hour period, they said, my heart was beating 30,000 extra beats more than the average person. It was going fast constantly,” she said. “Your heart is a muscle. If a muscle is working so hard all the time, eventually the muscle will get weak and cause heart attack, stroke, death, whatever it is.”
Anthony tried medication to address the PVC but she didn’t like the side effects.
“It really makes you so tired and out of it,” she said. “I’m on set. I’m reading scripts. I’m filming. There’s no way I could just be that tired. I was literally head-bobbing mid-conversation.”
Her PVC was life changing and taught her to not only listen to her body but to also put herself first.
“This made me reprioritize myself because it’s always about everyone else and work and this and that,” Anthony continued. “And it’s like, if I’m not good, I’m not gonna be good for anyone.”
