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Peloton's Jessie Malone is running a marathon to mark a year since her Apple Watch saved her life by detecting a heart condition from which she suffered completely without knowing what it was.
Malone is not just a young and fit woman who exercises regularly, she is a producer for Peloton in New York. However, as she was biking home in May 2023, her Apple Watch warned her that she might have atrial fibrillation.
“It said you need to get medical help immediately,” she told Today.com. “It was red and vibrating. I thought, “Oh God!”
While cycling, her heart rate jumped to 160 beats per minute, but she says she didn't feel anything else. than a little nausea. After her Apple Watch “stated that my resting heart rate was elevated and that I was experiencing atrial fibrillation,” she says she ditched the electric bike and went to the emergency room.
“Suddenly I was surrounded by eight doctors,” she continues. “That's when one of the doctor's first questions was, 'Has anyone in your family ever dropped dead without explanation?' And I was like, “Wow, what?!”
Doctors wanted to restart her heart. using a defibrillator, but the necessary medications to stop her heart first did not help. Other medications lowered her heart rate to 130 beats per minute and she was hospitalized.
Malone says she had no underlying medical condition and no genetic predisposition to heart problems. However, she says she didn't sleep well and also drank a lot of caffeine.
“The doctor was under the impression that [the combination of these factors] may have accumulated to the point where it caused atrial fibrillation,” she says. “It was the perfect storm when you lived in New York and didn't take care of yourself properly.”
Malone needs to get up at 5 am. for her role as a producer at Peloton, and she can't change that. But she says she has given up caffeine and alcohol and changed her diet.
“I pay a lot of attention to sleep,” she adds. “It’s mostly about me getting back to a healthy lifestyle.”
She is also training hard and will run the Washington, D.C. Marathon in early May 2024. This is especially to celebrate one year since her hospitalization.
“I feel like a completely different person, with much more energy,” says Malone. “You need to prioritize your own health – that’s the most important thing.”
Atrial fibrillation is an irregular and severely elevated heart rate that Apple Watch has been able to detect since the release of Apple Watch Series 4 in 2018.
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