Christina Applegate has revealed the five ‘weird’ multiple sclerosis (MS) symptoms she initially ignored before realising she has the condition.
The Anchorman star was diagnosed back in 2021 and often speaks out about her experiences living with it.
It’s not clear what causes the health condition, but MS happens when the immune system attacks your brain and nerves.
What is MS?
As per the NHS, MS is currently incurable and affects the brain and spinal cord. People with the condition are affected differently but the most common symptoms include fatigue, muscle cramps, spasms and stiffness and problems with memory or concentration.
While anyone can suffer from it, you might be more likely to get MS if you’re a woman, you’re aged 20 to 50, you have a close relative with it, you smoke or you’ve had the Epstein-Barr virus.
Applegate discussed her condition on the podcast. (Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for SiriusXM)
‘Weird’ MS symptoms Christina Applegate noticed
During an episode of SiriusXM’s This Life of Mine with James Corden, Applegate opened up about odd symptoms she experienced.
“For years and years and years, I’d have, like, some weird things … balance issues, speech issues,” the actor recalled. “My hands would shake sometimes, and I remember playing tennis – I played tennis a couple times a week, and my knee would go out.”
At the time, she put it all up to being ‘dehydrated’ or it being ‘too hot’ outside.
But in January 2021 she noticed her ‘toes got numb’.
“And I ignored it,” she admitted, “and I still was hiking and then I’d be like, ‘Whoa, that’s, hmm. That’s a weird muscle spasm.’”
Things started to ‘get weirder and weirder’ for Applegate and really got worse as she approached the filming of the final season of Dead to Me.
“By this time I was like, ‘You guys, I can’t even walk up the steps to my trailer.’”
Christina Applegate was working on Dead to Me at the time. ( Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for Critics Choice Association)
“Please don’t tell me this”
With the build up of symptoms, Applegate went for tests and an MRI scan of her brain, receiving a call from her doctor while at work.
“I remember saying to them, ‘I have to leave. I have to go home and be there at seven,’ and they’re like, ‘Well, we have like one more scene to do,’ and I just said, ‘I can’t. I gotta go home,'” she said.
Once she got back, she got onto a video call where her doctor just looked at her and said: “I’m so sorry.”
Shown an image of her brain, she could see ‘like 30 lesions all over’ and she responded: “No, please don’t tell me this. Please don’t tell me this.”
Applegate rang the production crew to inform them ‘it’s f**king MS’ and work was shut down for the week.
“That was it, and then we were just trying to figure out how to film and stuff, and we did. I mean, we finished it. It took us a long time, but we finished it. But yeah, I remember that moment like it was yesterday,” she added.