Christina Applegate has opened up about her daily battles with Multiple Sclerosis.
Speaking on the Tuesday, November 5, episode of her “MeSsy” podcast, cohosted with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who also suffers from the autoimmune disease, Applegate, 52, said she feels sharp pains “every single day.”
“I lay in bed screaming,” Applegate said while detailing how the autoimmune disease manifests differently from person to person. “Like, the sharp pains, the ache, the squeezing.”
She noted that these symptoms affect her “every single day” of her life, adding that sometimes she isn’t able to pick up her phone or TV remote as a result of MS traveling into her hands. “I can’t open bottles now,” Applegate told Sigler, 43, and the pair’s guest, Rory Kandel, the founder of Rory’s Bakehouse in Napa.
According to Mayo Clinic, MS causes a breakdown “of the protective covering of nerves,” and can lead to numbness, weakness, difficulty when walking, impacted vision and further symptoms.
Applegate’s candid health update comes after she revealed in April that she experienced an MS relapse this year. “I’m gonna be honest with you, I need to buy stock in Cottonelle because I haven’t taken a shower in three weeks,” Applegate said during the April 2 episode of “Messy.” The actress continued at the time, “I can’t stand in my shower. There’s no f—ing way.”
Applegate was diagnosed with MS in 2021, taking to social media at the time to share the news publicly. “Hi friends. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS,” she wrote via Twitter in August that year. “It’s been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition. It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a—— blocks it.”
She continued, “As one of my friends that has MS said ‘We wake up and take the indicated action.’ And that’s what I do. So now I ask for privacy. As I go through this thing. Thank you xo.”
While Applegate has experienced a string of debilitating symptoms since her diagnosis, she has also seen some light, revealing one week after her April 2 podcast episode that her health exceeded her expectations while vacationing with her family in The Netherlands and Paris.
“I ended up walking. I couldn’t believe it. The first couple of days I walked with my cane and then I started to feel like that was actually hindering me a little bit in some weird way,” Applegate said.
Prior to the vacation, she hadn’t gone over “maybe 2,000 steps in a day” for two years. “All of a sudden this, like, strange superpower took over and I just ended up walking without my cane the whole rest of the time and was amazed by it,” she detailed at the time.
Applegate launched her podcast with Sigler in March, telling Good Morning America at the time, “I’ve been playing a character called Christina for 40 years, who I wanted everybody to think I was because it’s easier. But [the podcast] is kind of my coming-out party.”
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