TV presenter Sally Bee looks the picture of good health – slim, fit, with glowing skin and glossy hair. Yet according to medical experts, she shouldn't be alive.

At the age of 36, this happy, lively mother-of-three from Stratford-upon-Avon had three heart attacks in quick succession, which left half of her heart irreparably damaged. Doctors did what they could but expected her to die.

Only she didn't die. She's living life to the full – and she can now boast that the Obamas own a copy of her healthy eating cookbook.

Her incredible story has baffled the medical profession, but she's used her experience to help other heart patients and has published The Secret Ingredient, stuffed full of recipes to keep hearts healthy everywhere, including the White House.

When Sally suffered her heart attacks, she had three children under five, didn't smoke or drink and was fit.

She was just trying to lose the weight she had gained having her youngest child, Lela.

"I went to a child's birthday party and just very quickly felt very unwell," she explains.

"I had a feeling of impending doom. I handed my nine-month-old daughter to a friend, went to the toilet and then came out and collapsed."

The pain in her chest increased, her left arm went limp and she felt sick and sweaty. An ambulance took her to Warwick Hospital, but paramedics thought she was having a panic attack and she was eventually allowed home.

"I believed everything they told me – I had such faith in the medical profession but I don't anymore. I was having a heart attack all night."

The pain gradually subsided but a couple of days later, it hit her again.

Again, she was rushed to hospital, only this time the ECG results were shocking.

She says: "I was told by a cardiologist that my blood tests showed I had suffered a very serious heart attack."

In hospital the pain worsened and Sally's condition deteriorated to the extent that she couldn't speak.

She added: "The only thought in my head was to keep breathing. I made a deal with myself that I would just keep breathing. I think that saved my life at the time."

The team managed to stabilise Sally to move her to a hospital in Coventry where she had an angiogram to assess any blockage in the arteries, but the surgeon was so shocked at the damage he found he left the operating theatre.

She said: "The nurses and assistants followed quietly, as if embarrassed – I was all alone. There was nothing they could do. They 'd left me there to die. I thought for a moment that I was dead and this was what it was like."

She later found out that her main left artery had unravelled and disintegrated. She was diagnosed with spontaneous coronary artery dissection (SCAD), a condition so rare that only 120 cases have been recorded since its detection in 1938.

Doctors told her husband, Dogan, she was going to die.

"Dogan came in sobbing, saying 'I love you'. It was the moment he walked in that I realised I was alive. At that point I thought about the children and that's where my survival instinct kicked in big time.

"Nobody can really explain why I survived that night. According to medical books, I shouldn't have."

Sally believes that she survived because she was fit beforehand, a non-smoker and a healthy eater. Day by day, her heart became stronger and a few weeks after her heart attacks, she was sent home, with doctors expecting her to return imminently.

"At first I could walk a few paces, then I'd have to lie down. But I was running high on adrenaline because I'd survived the unsurvivable."

She relied on family and friends for support and had to employ a nanny to look after the children, but there were a lot of bleak months ahead.

But food and exercise became her saviour as she fought to regain control of her life.

"It was all about taking control of my own destiny. It was baby step after baby step. The way I moved and the food that I ate had a massive impact on my health. If I thought, oh blow it, I'll have a cheese sandwich for lunch, I'd sleep for 12 hours afterwards. But if I had something light and nutritious, I could walk down the drive and back.

"At one point I had a Chinese takeaway and I had to go to hospital because my heart rhythm went completely haywire. Very quickly I had to cut out all additives."

Five years on, Sally, 42, now counsels heart patients, directing them towards a more healthy, happier lifestyle, largely through nutritious food and exercise.

She'll be on a very heavy drugs regime for the rest of her life, she'll never run a marathon and she doesn't go to the gym.

She goes back to hospital every six months for a check-up and is still confounding the doctors.

As Sally regained strength, she created a new healthy eating plan for her and her family, believing that healthy eating was instrumental in her recovery. She went on to self-publish her book of her recipes, which the publisher Collins has now taken on.

Michelle Obama may be a great proponent of healthy eating but to this day, Sally doesn't know how word of the book arrived with the US President.

"I'm still trying to find out how they found out," she says. "I phoned the White House trying to find out who had ordered it.

"I got through to the First Lady's office and explained the situation, asking if I could find out if Michelle had seen the book and, in the same breath, saying I'd like to come and meet her.

"This person came back and said, 'You're welcome to contact her when you come to the States and we'll see if we can arrange it'."

Now Sally is hoping to go out in the spring and meet the Obamas, a prospect exciting enough to give anyone palpitations.

"I'd ask Michelle what her favourite family foods are. I know that Barack Obama eats burgers and fries, so I wonder if she battles to get him to eat healthily."

Today, doctors have no prognosis for Sally. But then she's aware she's already passed all the landmarks they predicted she wouldn't see – the family holidays, her 40th birthday, a new publishing career.

"My 40s are going to be the best years of my life," she declares. "I no longer feel like I'm living with a timebomb."