A meteorologist fainted on air a few years after she vomited on TV and discovered she had a heart problem

• A meteorologist fainted on air just before she was due to read the weather.
• Alissa Carlson Schwartz had previously vomited on air because of a leaky heart valve.

A meteorologist who fainted live on TV on Saturday said it wasn't caused by the leaky heart valve that made her vomit on air in 2014.

Alissa Carlson Schwartz was about to do the weather report for Los Angeles' KCAL News when her eyes rolled into the back of her head and she fell forward while live on camera.

"Thankfully it's not my heart this time," Schwartz said on her Instagram story on Sunday.

In another story she wrote: "Thanks for all the kind wishes as I recover from a head injury. I am out of the hospital and doing ok. lots of sleep and even some pizza - TY'"

This comes after she vomited live on air in July 2014 and was later diagnosed with a leaky heart valve.

A leaky heart valve — also known as regurgitation — is when one of the flaps that lets blood flow through the chambers of the heart lets some blood go backward into the previous chamber.

Schwartz told KGET in 2018 that she thought she was too young and healthy to have a heart condition when the doctor suggested it to her.

But the American Heart Association — where Schwartz later became the "Circle of Red" chairman — said that different types of leaky valves can happen for different reasons, including congenital heart defects or hypertension.

A leaky heart valve can often have no symptoms

Regurgitation can often have no symptoms and be so minor that it does not require treatment. Other times it can strain the heart as it has to work harder to pump blood around the body, the AHA said.

In some cases surgery is needed to either fix or replace the leaky valve. Schwartz told KGET she was told that hers would have to be replaced when it wore out, but they didn't yet know when that would be.

Later, in the Spring of 2017 and nine months after having her daughter, Schwartz experienced chest pains and was taken for more tests at the hospital.

The tests found that the valve had started to repair itself thanks to the stem cells in her body from being pregnant, Schwartz told KGET.

In response to her recent fainting, KCAL News said that Schwartz is now recovering and will be back on air as soon as she's well enough to return.