Actor's heart diagnosis after marathon training

An actor and comedian says her life-threatening heart condition was only discovered after she felt breathless and ill while training for a half marathon.

Becky Shorrocks, from Worthing, West Sussex, was diagnosed in 2017 with arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM), an inherited disease that causes heart muscle cells not to stick together as they should.

Ms Shorrocks, who was 34 at the time, was a keen runner with no previous heart issues.

She said "I burst into tears when it dawned on me that life was going to change”.

ACM can cause dangerous heart rhythms which can lead to cardiac arrest and sometimes sudden cardiac death.

Ms Shorrocks was fitted with an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) - a small device which can help treat dangerously abnormal and life-threatening heart rhythms.

Although the actor's ICD can revert rhythms back to normal and potentially save her life, it cannot cure her condition, the British Heart Foundation said.

The actor gave birth to her daughter in 2021 and said she "cried tears of joy" when she got the news that she had not inherited the condition.

Ms Shorrocks is now urging people to donate to lifesaving research into heart and circulatory diseases.

She said: "It’s hard to put it into words what the research means to us and what it’s given us as a family.

“It’s giving us hope for the future.”

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