Julie Bowen has revealed she was fitted with a pacemaker when she was just 29 years old.
The actress, who is best known for portraying Claire Dunphy in Modern Family, opened up about her health issues during an appearance on the Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum.
“I do have a pacemaker,” the now 55-year-old said on the podcast. “I had sick sinus syndrome, Hypervagotonia.”
The actress said her sister, who was a medical student at the time, was the one who first noticed that there was something wrong with her heart.
“She was in med school and she was at that time in her life when I guess she’d always carry around a stethoscope and we were on vacation and she was like, ‘I want to listen to this,'” she explained. “And she listened to my heart, and she was like, ‘That is not what they’ve been telling you, it’s not runner’s heart or whatever, you need to go to a cardiologist’.”
While the actress initially ignored her sister’s concerns, a month later, while she was filming the pilot for the TV series Ed, she decided to finally see a doctor.
“I shot the pilot of Ed and immediately had to go get a pacemaker afterwards,” she shared. “I was like ‘Oh my god, my life is over. This is so weird, I’m going to die.'”
The actress said she experienced lightheadedness on a regular basis and she was told she would soon start passing out from the condition.
“It was a vague feeling,” she described on the podcast. “Because whenever I was relaxed, really relaxed, it would be like watching TV or movie or something, it was like I’d been holding my breath for a while, that feeling of lightheadedness.”
When the medical experts told her she needed a pacemaker, she didn’t hesitate.
“They said, ‘You’re going to be driving a car and you’re going to pass out and you’re going to kill somebody,'” she explained. “And I was like ‘Oh, well then give me the goddamn pacemaker.'”
Her pacemaker is set to alert if her heartbeat drops below 45 beats per a minute. Before it was fitted, her heartbeat was sitting around 30 beats per minute.
This is not the first time Julie has opened up about her health issues.
In 2023, while appearing on The View, the actress said she’d recently had plastic surgery on her stomach to fix the damage caused when she gave birth to her twin sons via c-section.
“I finally got the stomach fixed,” she told the panel.
“Finally, after all these years. They ripped it open, the twins just ripped it,” she continued. “And I said, ”As soon as Modern Family is done …I’ll get it fixed.’ But it was 11 years! So 11 years later, we wrapped on Friday and Monday they went in and they do you like a sneaker.”
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