Nov. 4, 2024
Several years ago, Lorraine O’Quinn worried that she was going to die.
For about two decades, the realtor from Trenton, Ont., said, she would often eat foods packed with heavy carbohydrates, such as bread, pastries and cereal, as well as processed foods. With a thriving family real estate business, she worked for at least 12 hours, seven days a week for about half a year during the peak home-buying season, she said.
She described her life as being on the “hamster wheel” of work, helping charities and never taking enough time to take care of herself.
She said she developed health problems, including fatty liver disease, high blood pressure, heart disease and a gallbladder attack.
And she thought her health problems and weight gain were just a normal part of life.
Then during a five-day charity hike in 2019, she said she felt a tightness in her chest and had to be hospitalized, she recalled in an interview with CTV News last month. Doctors discovered two major heart arteries were nearly fully blocked, she said, so she had to get heart stents.