Carol Vorderman shares worrying health battle and admits 'I haven't been careful'

Broadcaster Carol Vorderman has spoken about her health concerns and admitted that she hasn’t been careful.

The former Countdown team member told the Western Morning News that she’s always been a workaholic and that her desire to work had “led to some kind of heart issue”.

Carol also went into further detail about her commitment to work and the five-word phrase she uses to describe her newfound popularity on social media.

Speaking to the publication she said: “I’ve always been the same – I’m a workaholic. I think they should have group sessions for that, I’d be first on: My name is Carol Vorderman, and I’m a workaholic.

“It’s been my pattern all the way through my life, is I work, work, work, work, work, then I ‘collapse’. That’s very much in inverted commas. But in the past, about every 10 years, it’s led to some kind of heart issue or something like that.

“So as you get older – I’ll be 64 in December – you have to be a little more careful. I haven’t been remotely careful over the last two years in terms of the amount of work, but I will have to look at that. I just get so passionate about it – that’s the thing.”

Carol, 63, has built up a massive following on social media in recent years, something which she says she is “grateful” for. She added: “I call myself an old bird with an iPhone, which is what I am – it’s literally just me screenshotting stuff.

“I don’t have a team of people or a newsroom to fall back on – and I’m fascinated by that because one of my big things is about communicating information. That’s what’s always driven me, whether it’s science programmes, tech programmes or whatever it might be.”

In recent weeks, Carol has announced that she’s stepping back after a health scare that landed her in hospital and led to her quitting her show on LBC.

She told Instagram: “Hello, I’ve got some news to share with you. After working 7-day weeks for as long as I can remember, I finally burned out just over two weeks ago and I ended up overnight in hospital. Luckily, after many scans and checks, we know that I don’t have any underlying health issues whatsoever.

“So, after a proper talking to from my family and my buddies, I’ve taken the health scare as a warning sign to slow down slightly and have decided to cut my work back to weekdays for now.”

With this new slowdown has come a 12 hours-a-day rule and a renewed focus on social media rather than travelling to London. Carol told the Cheltenham Literature Festival: “I’m quite fine, I had all the checks and everything, but I can’t work seven day weeks anymore.

“So I’m going to centre on social media a lot more in the future rather than travelling up to London all the time. I now switch my phone off for 12 hours a day. Like physically off. Tends to be over the night time hours.”