Cardiologists Are Begging People With Fatigue To Do This One Thing ASAP originally appeared on Parade.
Taylor Swift appeared on the New Heights podcast on Wednesday to talk about the upcoming release of her 12th studio album, but she spent plenty of time discussing her personal life. That included an update on her dad, Scott Swift, who recently had quintuple bypass surgery.
“He’s had a perfect [electrocardiogram] every year that he’s gone in for physicals. But what found his five hard blockages in his heart was a resting stress test,” Swift shared. Swift also revealed that her father’s health complication was dire. She said her father was told by his medical team, “We’ve gotta do this tomorrow. We don’t know how you walked in here, dude. This is crazy.”
Since then, Swift said that her father has encouraged all of his friends to get this stress test. “He’s been telling all his friends, ‘You need to get the stress test,’ because that’s what’s actually preventative,” Swift said. “If you can find that earlier, you don’t have to have a bypass surgery. You can sort out those blockages with stents and things that are a lot less invasive.”
Searches for resting stress tests immediately spiked online after the podcast episode was released, and raised a lot of questions about what this test is and who should get it. Cardiologists break it down.
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The Test Cardiologists Want People With Fatigue To Take ASAP
While Swift referred to this as a “resting stress test,” she seems to be referring to what is actually called a nuclear stress test. This is often recommended in people who have unexplained fatigue or other signs of heart complications, according to Dr. Yu-Ming Ni, MD, a cardiologist and lipidologist at MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA.
Related: The One Thing to Do Every Single Day to Lower Inflammation In Your Arteries, According to Cardiologists
“A stress test is a diagnostic test that we use to help evaluate patients who we are concerned have blockages in their coronary arteries, the arteries that feed heart muscle,” explains Dr. Isla McClelland, MD, a cardiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “There are different kinds of stress tests, but in general they use exercise or a medication to ‘stress’ the cardiovascular system in a safe, monitored setting so that we can see how the heart muscle reacts.”
“The purpose of a stress test is to detect blockages of 70% or greater that may go undetected in a resting state,” says Dr. M. Scott Dawson, MD, a cardiologist at southern New Jersey’s Cooper and Inspira Cardiac Care.
The most common type of stress test involves walking on a treadmill to look for changes on an electrocardiogram with exercise, says Dr. Dawn Warner Kershner, DO,a cardiologist with The Heart Center at Mercy in Baltimore, Maryland. “The exercise treadmill stress test can be done with or without nuclear imaging,” Dr. Kershner says. “In general, nuclear imaging improves the accuracy of the test.” However, Swift suggested that her father had a stress test that involved medication to stress the heart, not exercise.
Related: Here’s What Happens to Your Heart if You Take a Cold Shower Every Day
How the Nuclear Stress Test Works
The nuclear stress test without exercise involves giving a patient a medicine called a vasodilator, Dr. Ni says. “This dilates—widens—the heart arteries and it only lasts for about five to 10 minutes,” he explains.
“This medication imitates exercise,” explains Dr. Lawrence Phillips, MD, director of nuclear cardiology at NYU Langone Heart.
Doctors also inject patients with a radioactive substance, like thallium or sestamibi, so they can scan the heart and see how the substance travels through the veins and heart, Dr. Ni says. “It’s a pretty simple test,” he continues. “We do it all the time in our clinic. It’s one of the most accurate ways of detecting a severe blockage.”
The test can help doctors see if there is an area of the heart that isn’t getting enough blood flow, Dr. McClelland says. “If there is such an area present, it indicates to us that there may be a blockage in the artery going to that part of the heart,” she explains.
While the stress test can be done with exercise or with medication, Dr. Phillips says the test that uses medication “can diagnose disease that is just as good as exercise.”
Who Should Get This Stress Test
Doctors are hesitant to assign a specific age to whom should get this test, given that anyone can have heart health issues that need to be explored. But Dr. Ni says it starts to become more important once you enter midlife, especially if you have specific symptoms and risk factors.
“I generally don’t recommend it for an otherwise young and healthy person,” Dr. Ni explains. “But as you get toward middle age, it is important to get stress testing.”
That’s especially true if you have symptoms like you’re not able to exercise or do an activity as well as you did before. “That’s whether you’re more short of breath than before while taking the stairs or you have significant fatigue with doing activities,” he says. “It could be as simple as taking the stairs, going for a light jog or sexual activity. If it’s exhausting you more than before, it could be an indication that your heart is not getting enough blood flow.”
Having chest pain, specifically in the middle or left side of the chest, shortness of breath, and nausea, especially when it’s related to exercise or exertion, can also be red flags to get a stress test, according to Dr. Phillips.
Related: Here’s What Happens to Your Heart if You Take a Cold Shower Every Day
Dr. McClelland says the test should be ordered by a doctor after going over symptoms. “In general, if someone is having symptoms concerning for artery blockages or if they have other medical problems that can increase their risk of blockages—especially if they are going to be doing something where we know they will be under stress, like about to undergo surgery—we will order these tests,” she explains. “There is no specific age cut-off or group where we do or do not use this test as each patient situation is different.”
ButDr. Ragavendra Baliga, MBBS, a cardiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, says this isn’t usually part of a routine physical exam. “While celebrity disclosures can raise awareness, the messaging should emphasize that stress testing is indicated based on symptoms and risk profile—not as a universal screening tool—to avoid unnecessary testing or false positives,” he adds.
What Happens Next
If you have a resting stress test with abnormal findings, Dr. Kershner says that doctors will usually recommend cardiac catheterization. This is a procedure where a thin, flexible tube called a catheter is inserted into a blood vessel and guided to the heart to look inside, according to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI).
“Cardiac catheterization is the gold standard to assess the coronary arteries for significant blockages,” she shares. The results of this test will dictate next steps, which may include medications, inserting a stent to keep an artery open, or open heart surgery.
If you had a stress test done and you’re still having symptoms or risk factors for cardiovascular disease, doctors may recommend that you have it again in the future.
“This varies from person to person,” she says. Still, there’s even more variation depending on how you feel.
“Most of the time, we get these tests when people are having heart symptoms, so there is no set schedule where we get this test every X number of years,” Dr. McClelland says. However, Dr. Dawson adds that stress tests do a good job of predicting whether someone will have a cardiac event for up to two years after the test is done.
Swift shared that her father is now doing “incredibly well” and regularly talks about the stress test to try to encourage others to get it too.
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Sources:
Nuclear Stress Test, U.S. National Library of Medicine
Dr. Dawn Warner Kershner, DO, a cardiologist with The Heart Center at Mercy in Baltimore, Maryland
Dr. Isla McClelland, MD, a cardiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Dr. Yu-Ming Ni, MD, a cardiologist and lipidologist at MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute at Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA
Dr. Ragavendra Baliga, MBBS, a cardiologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center
Dr. Lawrence Phillips, MD, director of nuclear cardiology at NYU Langone Heart
Dr. M. Scott Dawson, MD, a cardiologist at southern New Jersey’s Cooper and Inspira Cardiac Care
Cardiac Catheterization, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute
Cardiologists Are Begging People With Fatigue To Do This One Thing ASAP first appeared on Parade on Aug 14, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Aug 14, 2025, where it first appeared.
