Modern Family star Julie Bowen has spoken about a health scare she suffered at the age of 29, that ended with her needing a pacemaker.

Bowen, 55, shared the story of the Inside of You podcast with Michael Rosenbaum in an episode that was released on July 1.

Rosenbaum asked the actress if she’d ever had any surgeries and she initially said she hadn’t, until Rosenbaum reminded her of her pacemaker.

Watch the video above.

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“That’s right, I forget about that all the time,” she said.

Bowen explained she was diagnosed with “sick sinus syndrome,” a heart rhythm disorder, also known as “hypervagotonia”.

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“It means your heart rate just goes really low,” she explained.

She explained her pacemaker ensures her heart rate doesn’t fall below 45 beats per minute.

“I was a runner all throughout high school and then, I was a really competitive runner and I always had a really low heart rate,” Bowen explained.

At the time her sister, Dr. Annie Luetkemeyer, was in med school, and it was just after Bowen had finished college that her sister checked her heart rate because she’d “always carry around a stethoscope”.

They were on vacation and her sister said she wanted to listen to Bowen’s heart rate and immediately picked up on the condition, telling her it’s not “runner’s heart” and she needed to “go to a cardiologist”.

“And she wouldn’t let it go, and I was like, ‘I’m fine.'”

A month later, Bowen was being fitted with a pacemaker which regulates her heartbeat.

“I shot the pilot of Ed and immediately had to go get a pacemaker afterwards,” Bowen said.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God. My life is over. This is so weird. I’m gonna die.’ I don’t know what I thought it was, because I was 29,” she recalled.

Rosenbaum commented Bowen was “lucky you didn’t die before that”, however Bowen explained they said she “wouldn’t probably die of it, but I’d start passing out”.

“There was a vague feeling … whenever I was relaxed, really relaxed, I’d be, like, watching TV or movie, it felt like I’d been holding my breath for a while, that feeling of, like, lightheadedness. And they said, ‘You’re gonna be driving a car, and you’re gonna pass out, and you’re gonna kill somebody.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, well, then give me the Goddamn pacemaker,'” she said.

The pacemaker is replaced every few years as needed when the battery runs out.

Bowen starred as Claire Dunphy in the hit TV series Modern Family from 2009 until 2020.

Later in the podcast, Bowan spoke of auditioning for Modern Family while she was pregnant with twins.

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“And we shot the whole pilot with me massively pregnant with twins,” she said, although she said she was told they’d “reshoot the pilot” after she had given birth, but they never did.

Her most recent project is Adam Sandler’s Happy Gilmore reboot Happy Gilmore 2, which is due out on Netflix in Australia this month.

When it came time to rejoin the Happy Gilmore family, Bowen said she was uncertain of the role she would play, having been the love interest in the original movie.

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She said shooting the movie was “so fun”.

“All Adam productions are fun,” she said. “He’s the kindest, nicest … he really is. And his wife is there and his kids are there … it’s like old times.”

Bowen is mum to three boys – Oliver, 18, and twins John and Gustav, 16, with ex-husband Scott Phillips. The couple were together from 2004 until 2018.

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