About Dr. Arash Bereliani, MD, FACC
Heart disease begins long before symptoms appear, and it can be prevented.
I know what it feels like to lose someone without warning.
I've lived through the doubts, the what-ifs, and the grief that follow a sudden loss. Heart disease touched my own family, and it changed the way I see medicine forever.
About Dr. Arash Bereliani, MD, FACC
Heart disease begins long before symptoms appear, and it can be prevented.
The Moment That Changed Everything
It was an ordinary afternoon. My fiancée Tatiana and I had just finished touring a wedding venue. We were talking about guest lists, music, and the future. It felt like the kind of day that marks a new chapter.
Then her phone rang.
Within minutes, everything changed.
Her mother had collapsed at home. There were no obvious warning signs, no dramatic symptoms that anyone recognized. One moment she was upstairs, and the next she was gone.
She was only sixty-seven.
What made it even harder to process was how sudden it felt. No long hospital stay. No clear buildup. No explanation that prepared anyone for what was coming.
When I was a child, my younger brother developed rheumatic fever that affected his heart. I still remember the fear in our home and the uncertainty that followed. Thankfully, he recovered, but the experience never left me.
Years later, my father faced his own battle with heart disease. By the age of forty-nine, he required a five-vessel coronary bypass. Looking back, the signs were there much earlier. Like so many people, he pushed through symptoms and dismissed what felt manageable.
This is why prevention, especially for women, became my mission
After those experiences, I kept asking myself the same question so many families ask:
Were there signs we missed?
Those losses forced me to look deeper, not only at how heart disease develops, but at how often symptoms are subtle, misinterpreted, or dismissed entirely.
They changed the way I practice medicine. They strengthened my conviction that heart disease rarely appears out of nowhere. In many cases, it builds quietly over time, long before a crisis makes it visible.
That day did not just affect our family. It reshaped my mission.
A Different Approach to Heart Disease
Those experiences led me to focus not only on treating heart disease, but on identifying it years before symptoms appear. Prevention requires looking beyond traditional risk factors and using advanced diagnostics, genetic insight, and highly individualized care.
Why Women’s Heart Disease Is Often Missed
For decades, cardiovascular research and diagnostic standards were built primarily around male patterns of heart disease. Women often present differently. Symptoms may be subtler, dismissed as stress, hormones, or anxiety. By the time a diagnosis is made, risk has often been developing quietly for years. This reality has shaped my clinical focus, especially in caring for women navigating pregnancy, menopause, and the hormonal transitions that influence long-term cardiovascular health.
Clinical Background
Dr. Arash Bereliani is board-certified in Cardiovascular Disease and Internal Medicine. He serves as a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine and Cardiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and is on staff at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is also the Medical Director of The Beverly Hills Institute of Cardiology and Preventive Medicine.
He earned his medical degree from Finch University of Health Sciences, graduating first in his class and earning induction into the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. He completed his Internal Medicine residency and Cardiology fellowship at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.
With more than twenty-eight years in practice, Dr. Bereliani focuses on preventive cardiology, early detection of cardiovascular disease, and highly individualized care, with a particular emphasis on women’s heart health and long-term risk reduction.
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Women’s Heart Digest
Women’s heart health is different, yet much of what we know is based on male-centered research. The result is missed signals and delayed diagnoses. This biweekly email shares what gets overlooked, from young, active women to pregnancy, menopause, and every stage in between.