WWE Hall of Famer Diamond Dallas Page (DDP) recently appeared on Insight With Chris Van Vliet, discussing various topics, including his latest health scare and a photo of him in the hospital.
DDP said, “The funniest part about that was I was just coming off that, got a little buzz going, and I was just stretching the back of my hamstrings. This is so important. If you’re over 50, do not work out without a heart monitor. I wear my watch when I’m doing that, or my regular heart monitor. It connects to my app; there’s no excuse if you’re over 50. I’m working with a buddy of mine right now, Joe Gomez, it’s all me on the phone back and forth, and he’s going through rehab because he had a stroke, and he’s like 55. He was overweight, and now he’s dropped a bunch of it. Eventually, he’ll come to my house and stay with me for a while, because he’s one of the boys and I love him. He’s an awesome human being, and he gives to everybody. So I will pull him in and we’ll help get him back on track. But a stroke that takes away this arm and his leg. Now he’s got to learn how to use those again. So I had afib, and I had it also three years ago. I got it again for the same reason, overtraining. I mean pushing myself. I’m gonna be 70 in four more months.”
On his current health and how the health scare happened:
“Looking is great too. But I want everything to be looking great on the inside. That’s why I developed the heart monitor so long ago. But I couldn’t find it, and I didn’t take the time to go looking for it. I just started working with my two brother-in-laws at a gym, and I’d already done the cold blood, I’d already done the hypoxia, where I’m running backwards with oxygen at 8%, and then doing sprints with that, then getting on the mat, doing DDP Yoga, and then finish it with power cuffs. Now I just knew I was training too hard. I knew it. Then later that friggin night, I was doing one of those yoga swings where you hang upside down, which is really phenomenal for your hips and everything, your spine. When I came back up, and I can do that for 10 minutes. I was only down there for like two [minutes]. I came up, and I was like, whoa, whoa. What the hell was that? I got off the thing, and Paige’s family was here. We’re all on the porch, and she goes, ‘Well, what’s the matter with you? You’re perspiring.’ I go, ‘I gotta tell you, I pushed myself too hard today, I don’t know, I feel kind of weird.’”
On going to the hospital:
“She goes, ‘Let’s go upstairs and put a heart monitor on you.’ So she got her watch out. Now my heart rate is stuck at 140 to 150 and normally it goes down to 42 up to 180, it goes all through that. I call my doctor, Dr Asgar. I don’t care what time it is, if I call him, he answered the phone. I call him, he goes ‘Go to hospital right now, they’ll give you something to take you down.’ So it brought me down there for a couple hours, and then I turned around, and now I gotta go see my cardiologist, who is the best. He’d already done a test for me. When you get afib, they hit you with the paddles, and they put you out to do that. So they hit you with the paddles, and you might go online, meaning your heart rate goes back, or it might take two times. They won’t do more than three. Bottom line is, I went right on the first time, and when I was talking to him, he said, you don’t really have to do the ablation, meaning where they’re going to go up to your groin up into your heart and burn you. He said, you don’t really need it. But it’s way easier to do it to you when you’re not in afib. So bottom line, he goes, ‘The way you train, you probably should do it.’ I said, Oh man, let’s just do it. So that was three years ago. Now this time, the one you’re talking about, when I got out, it was just stretching, and I was going, ‘Hey, Paige, just hit record. I just said, I want to make sure you guys, if you’re over 50, you’re wearing a heart monitor so you don’t end up like me here with afib. I want to get the ablation and but you’re feeling good. But you only feel as great as you do right in this moment. So if you’re pushing yourself too hard and the whole thing with no pain, no gain, especially as you’re heading into your seniors, where I’m right on path, you got to be really smart.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
