However, the TV's Most Haunted star was shocked to discover that the symptoms - including extreme sea sickness that left her bedridden - were caused by her hormones.
Blood tests revealed that the 47-year-old had, in fact, gone into early menopause.
Yvette Fielding has had a new lease of life after discovering the cause of her terrifying symptomsThe mother-of-two was terrified by an array of disturbing symptoms from nausea and feeling shaky to suffering from vertigo and panic.
She told the Mirror that the pain in her chest was so bad she went into hospital thinking she was having a heart attack.
As well as feeling constant sickness as though she were on a ship, she says: 'then the depression hit,' adding how her husband Karl would, 'have to say the slightest thing and I'd just grab my car keys and drive anywhere, park up and set for an hour crying like somebody had died.'
But even her diagnosis brought little relief as she was wary of taking HRT because of a history of breast cancer in the family.
Yvette recently appeared on Loose Women where she told Coleen Nolan and the other hosts about a brush with death while filming the current series of Most Haunted
Manchester-born Yvette told the paper how she tried a variety of natural remedies including even putting magnets in her underwear but nothing worked.
Finally she was prescribed the hormone pills and said the effect was like 'somebody had lifted a black veil'.
Now Yvette's husband of 17 years, Karl Beattie not only has his old wife back, she's now got a new lease of life and has taken up painting.
The pair met on the set of BBC1's City Hospital when Yvette was presenting and Karl was cameraman.
Karl Beattie popped the question live on air during an episode of BBC's City Hospital in 1998 - 17 years later the pair are happily married with two children
Yvette (right) made her name presenting Blue Peter with Mark Curry and Caron Keating after starting when she was just 19 in 1987
Yvette says when she first saw him he was 'a vision' and she new she had to have him.
The couple made if official when Karl got down on one knee in front of the cameras.
Now the pair have two children William, 22, and Mary, 16, and the family live in a 17th century house that Yvette says is haunted, describing two 'ghost children' who like to play in one of the bedrooms.
After months of ill health, Yvette says the episode has made her think, 'Grab life by the balls. Because you never know what’s going to happen. Life goes by so quickly.
'I want to cram in as much as possible, just in case I have to leave this world earlier than anticipated.'