Brooke Shields Recalls the Insulting Question Asked by 2 Male Doctors After Her Grand Mal Seizure

Brooke Shields can’t help but compare how differently men and women are treated by doctors.

On Monday, Jan. 13, the model-actress appeared on Good Morning America and opened up about why she decided to touch on women’s experience in the healthcare system in her new book, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old.

“Women go through stuff. We need to be able to say, ‘This isn’t fair.’ We need to be able to self-advocate,” she said.

“I had a seizure not too long ago and the two male doctors said, ‘Are you restricting yourself for dietary reasons?’ And I was like, ‘No. I’m a 59-year-old woman who looks younger bloated. Give me some potato chips!’ You wouldn’t say that to a man.” 

“And that’s not what the book is, it’s not reducing it to male, female — we love the men in our lives,” she continued. “But it’s time to kind of explore this without yelling, without being angry. I tell my girls… we don’t have to yell louder. We just have to be secure in what we believe and to be heard, because we’re not going to get anywhere by just screaming.”

Shields gets candid in her book about aging and claiming agency over her body. She even writes about the moment she discovered she underwent a medical procedure she didn’t consent to.

ABC News correspondent Rebecca Jarvis asked on the show if anything scares Shields at this point in her life.

“No,” Shields replied. “I would be very disingenuous if I didn’t come to share my truth.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer​​, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. 

Shields first opened up about her health scare in her Glamour 2023 Women of the Year cover story. She said the seizure occurred before a performance of her one-woman show, Previously Owned by Brooke Shields, at New York City’s Café Carlyle, a famed performing arts venue and restaurant.

“I was preparing for the show, and I was drinking so much water, and I didn’t know I was low in sodium,” she recalled. “I was waiting for an Uber. I get down to the bottom of the steps, and I start evidently looking weird, and [the people I was with] were like, ‘Are you OK?’ ”

Shields explained that the night of the seizure she left her home, but kept getting asked by her companions if she was “all right” and needed some coffee. She said she “walked” to a “corner” outside and felt discombobulated before heading into nearby N.Y.C. restaurant L’Artusi. 

“I go to the sommelier who had just taken an hour to watch my run-through… Everything starts to go black. Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall,” the actress said at the time.

That was when the grand mal seizure started, describing it as “frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue.”

“The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on. And Bradley f—ing Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand,” she shared.

Ultimately, Shields said that doctors determined that “low sodium” caused the seizure after she consumed “too much water.” “I drowned myself. And if you don’t have enough sodium in your blood or urine or your body, you can have a seizure.”