A 53-year-old woman who posted a video on social media has revealed how a single comment from a viewer may have ended up saving her life.
Rachel, from Sydney, Australia, who asked that her real name not be used in this article, said she had recently been experiencing shortness of breath, extreme fatigue, lightheadedness, and a tingling sensation in her fingers.
“I put it down to stress because I was made redundant from my job at the end of 2024 and haven’t been able to find another job since,” she told Newsweek. “It’s been a pretty stressful process, and housing has been a bit of an issue.”
That all changed, however, after she posted a video to her TikTok account, @ageing.disgracefully. The response to the clip was largely unremarkable, save for one comment.
It read: “I am a cardiac nurse. I notice a blue tinge to your lips. Can you please go and have a calcium score CT done, an ECG, and blood work. Start with your GP.”
A significant proportion of Americans are turning to social media for health advice. Earlier this year, a KFF poll found that 31 percent of U.S. adults use social media at least monthly to seek health information and advice.
That is despite a 2026 JAMA study based on the U.S. Health Information National Trends Survey finding that 77.7 percent of adults said health information they encountered on social media was false or misleading.
“In truth, I rarely take notice of social media comments in general,” Rachel said. “However, I Googled the symptom and realized it aligned with the other things that had been going on.”
Rachel made an appointment with her doctor the very next day to undergo testing.
“I’m still going through the diagnostic process, so I don’t have a full diagnosis yet or know exactly what the problem is,” she said. “But there have been some abnormal findings in the initial tests.”
Rachel said there was something about the confronting nature of the comment that made her sit up and take notice. She eventually contacted the nurse who had posted the advice.
“Her story is pretty interesting,” Rachel said. “Her mother died from a heart attack, and she commented on one of my videos that she missed the blue-lips symptom in her mom, so now she’s hypervigilant.”
After researching the symptom and seeing its possible associations, Rachel decided it would be “foolish” not to seek medical advice, “even if it turned out to be nothing.”
Now, she is happy that her experience is helping raise awareness about women’s heart health.
“We are taught to look for heart symptoms that align with how men’s cardiac issues present,” she said. “They don’t talk about women’s symptoms much, and they are different and far more subtle. If this makes a difference for another woman, I’ll be happy.”
