Days away from welcoming her second child, HGTV star Jasmine Roth has revealed multiple health challenges she faced while trying to conceive, including the discovery of a “deadly condition” involving her heart.
In an in-depth essay for Motherly — published on September 22, 2024 — the star of “Help! I Wrecked My Home” opened up about the health struggles that contributed to her experiencing secondary infertility.
Though she and her husband Brett Roth had no issues getting pregnant with their daughter Hazel, now 4, the HGTV star wrote that after seven months of trying for a second, she was stunned when her doctor said, “You aren’t healthy enough to get pregnant.”
“At 39 years old, I knew I needed to figure out what was going on if I was going to have another baby,” Roth wrote.
Bloodwork Showed Dangerous Buildup in Jasmine Roth’s ‘Widowmaker’ Artery
In 2023, Roth shared with fans via social media about her ongoing issues with a herniated disk in her neck, which occurred during a long trip with her mom and daughter. In her Motherly essay, Roth said the injury “left me in excruciating pain and led me into a year of MRIs, physical therapy, steroid injections, and eventually stem cell injections.”
During what Roth called “one of the hardest years of my life” in her essay, she said her physical therapist encouraged her to see a functional medicine doctor. According to the Cleveland Clinic, functional medicine uses a holistic approach to find the “root cause(s)” of chronic illness, which could include “poor nutrition, stress, toxins, allergens, genetics and your microbiome (the bacteria living in and on your body).”
Skeptical but desperate for some answers, Roth was put through a “litany of tests,” the first of which revealed “extremely high genetic cholesterol,” she wrote.
“I was immediately sent for a scan of my heart,” Roth shared, “that showed build-up in the ‘widowmaker’ artery, the part of the heart that goes into cardiac arrest without warning. I was urgently transferred to a cardiologist for a full work-up.”
That doctor, Roth explained, said her heart was “struggling to pump blood.” Because the condition was genetic and she already led a “healthy lifestyle,” Roth shared that she was told she’d need “to start medication immediately and continue for the rest of my life.” Though she said she felt “overwhelmed” by the diagnosis, she also wrote that there was a “major sense of relief, knowing that we’d caught this deadly condition early on.”
Jasmine Roth Addressed Multiple Issues Before Seeing a Fertility Specialist
Though she noticed an improvement in her energy within weeks of starting the medication, Roth, who turned 40 on September 17, wrote in Motherly that she still felt “off” and she was about to learn why. Further testing, she wrote, “uncovered E. coli in my gut; high levels of mold in my body; significant vitamin deficiencies that needed to be addressed. But none of these problems were as glaring as my hormonal imbalances.”
“My ability to deal with stress was non-existent,” Roth wrote, explaining that poor sleep and high stress had impacted her ability to relax and truly rest, which had to be fixed before seeing a fertility specialist, her new doctor told her.
To her surprise, Roth said, the remedies not only included supplements and proper sleep, but also intense therapy to work through childhood trauma. Though she nixed the idea at first, she eventually went and wrote that “the relief was immense and I began to feel noticeably better.”
A few months later, Roth wrote, she was ready for fertility treatments, getting bloodwork done every two days and, eventually, attempting intrauterine insemination (IU), which worked with their first try. Her doctor urged “extreme caution” during the first trimester, Roth shared — “no sweating, no intercourse, no flying in airplanes; a whole list of foods to avoid.”
Now happily approaching her due date and feeling so much better than before, Roth wrote that she was hesitant to share her health journey, “knowing it was so much easier than what other families have been through.”
“But I also know there are a lot of people just like me, who think they’re ‘healthy’ and are struggling to figure out what’s next,” she wrote.
But fans on social media thanked Roth for being so open about her experience, including one who wrote, “You are very brave to share your story Jasmine but in sharing you can help so many others. That’s one of the things I admire about you, you are always giving ❤️🙌”
“Excellent and insightful article- thank you for sharing with the world,” another commented. “Very eye opening ❤️”
Roth and her family began the fall by moving from their longtime home in Newport Beach, California, to Park City, Utah, where they’re building a home and getting ready for their new arrival. Roth’s production company is also casting Utah homeowners for the next season of her show, which she’ll begin filming after her maternity leave.
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