Recently, Ray Romano had something no one likes: a health fear associated with the “widowmaker.”
The ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ star on Monday revealed that high cholesterol has put him in close danger with a so-called widow’s heart attack, caused when the heart’s main artery is almost or completely blocked.
“I just needed to get a stent in, I had a 90% blockage,” Romano told Marc Maron about the latter. WTF podcast as they discussed aging and diet. “I’m a little lucky that we found him.”
Romano said that while he doesn’t feel 65 in his mind, his body has given him several notices.
“20 years ago I had high cholesterol and my boyfriend always told me, ‘Why don’t we start taking statins,'” Romano said. Statins are a class of lipid-lowering drugs that are used to reduce the risk of heart disease and are commonly used to treat high cholesterol levels.
“Every time I said, ‘Let me do it myself,’ and I would go home and eat properly, not vegan, but I would eat a little healthier and lower it a couple of ticks,” he continued.
Romano said this method would lower his total cholesterol from about 280 to 220, which is still on the verge of being high. Johns Hopkins Medicine. “But then I would come home and think I was sexy, I already figured it out, and I started cheating, cheating, and that was the cycle.”
However, his doctor expressed concern, saying he wanted to treat Romano’s cholesterol levels more aggressively. He constantly told the comic that he would like to see lower numbers.
“Everything else was checked,” Romano said, revealing that he did stress tests and calcium tests but stayed on that cycle for 15 to 16 years.
Now the ‘Men of a Certain Age’ star is ‘on medication’ and says his cholesterol has dropped immediately. “If I could go back 20 years, I would take medication,” he said.
Maron said he has also struggled with cholesterol, saying he is constantly exercising and experimenting with a vegan lifestyle, hoping to improve his health.
“It’s hard for me to maintain this diet, it was hard,” Romano explained. “Here’s the catch: so I’m on medication and it’s really depressing now, so I guess I can enjoy food and eat now – my sugar levels are up now! I have prediabetes.”
Earlier this month, Romano said ET he had chest pains while filming Somewhere in Queens.
“I called my agent at 1am because I couldn’t sleep, I said, ‘I can’t do this,'” the comedian said. “Because – I’m not kidding – I had to go to my cardiologist in New York, get on the treadmill and get stress tested because I got chest pains.”
In 2017, Romano and Maron teamed up for the International Myeloma Foundation’s 11th Annual Comedy Celebration to raise money for the Peter Boyle Research Foundation, named after Romano’s late actor and co-star in Everybody Loves Raymond, who died in 2006. after a four-year battle with myeloma, a cancer of the plasma cells of the bone marrow.
