Steve Carrier on June 11, 2025
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson just dropped another personal health bombshell—this time, about a heart scare that almost put him on long-term medication.
During his emotional sit-down with Dr. Mark Hyman, the Hollywood megastar revealed how a traditional cardiovascular scan showed what looked like plaque buildup near his heart. Doctors were ready to prescribe meds on the spot. But Dwayne trusted his gut and called in a second opinion.
Johnson explained that after turning 53, he started doing the full health workup—colonoscopies, heart scans, the works. That’s when one test raised a red flag.
“Even now, as it relates to my heart—you know, all of a sudden, you’re rolling along in life and things are good. Then you reach your fifth level of life, and you realize that—oh, you’re of age. You’re 53 now. And when you become 53, that’s when all the tests start to happen, right? Like, okay, where’s the colonoscopy line, let’s do that. Here’s the cardiovascular workup, let’s look at the heart, all the valves, and things like that.”
“So when I was looking at the valves—and this was a little bit before you and I met, but just as we met—I was looking at the valves. I had a complete cardiovascular workup, and everything looked great—thank God, knock on wood. Then there was what looked to be some stuff inside the—what they thought was plaque—in the circumflex valve. In the artery, right?”
“And I didn’t even know what that—I’d never even heard of that. It goes around the back of your heart. I always hear the main two arteries, that’s what you hear. But I didn’t know about that one. So there was some buildup—or so they thought.”
“When we looked at it on the old-school traditional MRI and the scans, it looked like I had buildup. And then immediately the call to action was: ‘Alright, let’s get you on this medication. It’s a multi-month medication, and here we go—we’ve got to get on it right away.’ And I thought, ‘God…’ and I was so hesitant because I wasn’t taking any medication.”
Instead of blindly following orders, Dwayne called Dr. Hyman and laid out what doctors had recommended. He wasn’t looking to throw anyone under the bus—but something didn’t feel right.
“So then I called you. And I said, ‘Doc, listen—here’s what I got. I’m not indicting anybody, not throwing anyone under the bus, but what do you think? And here’s what their suggestion is.’”
Dr. Hyman’s reaction was immediate and firm.
“And again, I’ll never forget that Zoom. I said, ‘Okay, hold on, hold on. Let’s not jump to conclusions. I don’t want you getting on that right now. Don’t get on the medication.’”
“I said, ‘There are a couple steps we can take here that could be invaluable. For example, let’s get a scan done—but let’s get an AI scan done. That’s incredible.’”
Dwayne agreed—and the scan changed everything.
“I said, ‘Okay.’ We got the scan done. You sent it to your guy. And then it came back—and you know when you hear a song for the first time and you’re like, ‘Holy sht, I love that song’? That was the feeling.”
“You told me, ‘Here’s the report from our head cardiologist’—a very good friend of yours—and he said: ‘It looks great. It’s just an anatomical thing happening back there. It’s not buildup at all. His valves look great. Come back in three years.’”
Dr. Hyman broke it down even further—Dwayne’s heart was fine, and the advanced scan proved it.
“Your cholesterol was actually pretty good. You had low HDL genetically, which is the ‘good’ cholesterol—that’s an oversimplification—but we did a deeper panel of your cardiovascular risk factors.”
“We looked at ApoB, insulin, metabolic health, blood sugar, inflammation—all of it. Your inflammation level was super low. So here you were, about to start a drug for a problem you maybe didn’t even have—and it turns out, you didn’t need it.”
In the end, Dwayne never started the meds. The supposed “plaque” was just a harmless anatomical quirk. The situation was a huge reminder of the power of second opinions—and the potential of AI-assisted diagnostics.
Dwayne dodged a prescription and got peace of mind—all because he trusted his instincts and asked the right questions.
Would you have done the same? Or do you usually just go with the first diagnosis? Drop your thoughts in the comments and share if you’ve ever had a health scare that turned out to be something else.
Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.
June 11, 2025 12:44 pm
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