Model Bella Hadid is again opening up about her battle with Lyme disease. Bella stated she contracted Lyme around the age 14, but said that the symptoms increased when she turned 18. In 2016, Bella did an interview with People to raise awareness around the disease. She said she has bad days where she needs to sleep 12 hours a day and that there are so many symptoms of this invisible illness that people can’t see but which ” bring you to your knees on the inside.”
On Tuesday Bella shared several slides with infographics and statistics about Lyme Disease with her followers. On one slide she drew arrows to the multiple symptoms she tends to suffer from on a daily basis. People provides more information:
On Tuesday, the 23-year-old model opened up about battling Lyme disease daily, explaining to her followers on her Instagram Story what she typically experiences because of the “invisible” illness. Hadid re-posted diagrams and infographics about Lyme disease shared by chef Joudie Kalla’s Palestine on a Plate Instagram account.
Hadid, on one slide, drew arrows to point out nearly 30 common symptoms she faces, including headaches, brain fog, insomnia, and a sensitivity to light and noise. She also flagged anxiety, confusion, nausea, disordered eating, joint pain, and weight gain and loss as affecting her too.
“Every day I feel at least 10 of these attributes without fail … since I was probably 14, but more aggressively when I turned 18,” wrote Hadid. Hadid also shared a screenshot of Kalla’s post about the frustrations of coping with Lyme disease, calling it a “constant minefield that keeps on giving.” Added Kalla: “Sometimes you just want to drown and other days you feel like a super hero. What I know now is to take each day as it comes and try my best.”
Hadid also shared a screenshot of Kalla’s post about the frustrations of coping with Lyme disease, calling it a “constant minefield that keeps on giving.” Added Kalla: “Sometimes you just want to drown and other days you feel like a super hero. What I know now is to take each day as it comes and try my best.”
I was shocked to find out that Bella’s entire family has Lyme Disease. I’ve been a bystander to my aunt’s suffering from the disease. She had been sick for over decade before the doctors figured out what was going on. She has since moved from Paris back the States for treatment as there are no treatment plans in place in France for Lyme.
There needs to be more research on Lyme as it would seem that many people suffer from it without even knowing it. I do know the symptoms are terrifying. My aunt lost 60 lbs and suffered from high cortisol levels and chronic fatigue over the last few years because of it. Her symptoms were more severe because her illness went undiagnosed for so long.
I do hope that having the Hadids talking about Lyme will raise more awareness about it. I know I wouldn’t wish the ups and downs of the illness on my worse enemies.
I’d be interested to hear more about how the whole family got the disease. That is a very surprising fact.
As someone who has severe chronic pain which leads to some of the other symptoms she had mentioned, I commend her for drawing attention to invisible illness and disability.
I think Gigi is the only one who doesn’t have lyme. Didn’t they say they think they got the tick bites from their dogs or something? Maybe I’m remembering wrong.
They had horses/barn before she married Foster. I think they lived in Santa Barbara area.
They actually lived in Colorado with Mohamed for years before moving back to Southern California. He used to own and develop hotels before he moved to mega-mansions. I believe that is where they probably got the tick bites
They definitely didn’t contract Lyme in Colorado. The ticks that are able to transmit lyme don’t occur in CO. There are ticks but none of the lyme kind.
Sheâs pretty, would be nice if her foundation matched her real skin colour though.
I also do not like how thin the current âlookâ is. Especially since there have been rumours of how Bella and Gigiâs mother encouraged disordered eating to maintain low weight.
Her mom and brother also have it. I believe they think they got it from their horse ranch. I’ve also heard it can be passed from mother to child in the womb and can lay dormant before causing havoc later in life. It’s a debilitating disease. My stepmom has it. She has chronic pain and is confined to her bed most days.
Harpo…who dis woman?
Girl had been surgically molded three ways from sunday. You can lose all the baby fat you want but there is no way on God’s green earth that is the same face she was born with.
Guess you can’t repo a face Mohammed Hadid paid for…
Yea I was going to say, she also has severe body acceptance issues. The over the top preening and posing for the camera screams of desperation for attention. I know she’s a model but if your entire instagram is millions of selfies, that should be diagnostic in and of itself.
I thought those Burberry pants were assless chaps. I had to do a double take.
I wasn’t fooled, but I was definitely side-eyeing the decision to make a pair of (exquisitely expensive, I’m sure) pants look like assless chaps over well-waxed nudity.
I doubt their entire family has Lyme disease from ticks. They probably have âchronicâ Lyme which is the same thing Justin Bieber claims to have and is basically just general fatigue/malaise from drugs/unhealthy lifestyles.
there does seem to be a bit of a trend for celebrities to claim lyme disease. I mean perhaps they do, but it is strange.
Iâm with you too. Iâm not sure how everyone in the family has chronic Lyme. It seems pretty improbable. What theyâre claiming is that they all got bitten by ticks and that those ticks all carried Lyme. I could see one of them but 3 people?! Even if youâre super outdoorsy family, this is a stretch. I think hard lifestyles play more into this than theyâre admitting.
My friendâs husband is an immunologist who has worked extensively with the doctor who discovered Lyme. He told me that there are a lot of disreputable labs (notable ones in Texas and Germany) who tell lots of desperate people suffering from chronic and undiagnosed illness, pain and exhaustion that they have Lyme when they do not.
Basically there are a lot of illnesses out there which we do not have diagnoses for yet. Especially chronic illnesses which are âinvisibleâ and donât affect large numbers of people. Itâs incredibly frustrating for the people who suffer from them and they are usually seperate for a diagnosis and treatment.
There are piranhas out there ready to take advantage of such people. You send them a blood sample, they tell you that you have Lyme, and then they usually try to get you to pay for expensive treatments – sometimes upwards of $30k worth of treatments. Most of them are useless and pointless and Lyme is actually best treated by antibiotics as early as possible.
A friend of mine has MS. Before she got that diagnosis, she fell for one of these labs. Her parents are quite wealthy and they sent her to Texas for some of these bulls*t âtreatmentsâ, spending tens of thousands. Most of it was IVs of stuff (that makes anyone feel better briefly but doesnât actually do anything for a chronic disease in the long term), massages, face masks, and Goop-esque treatments. Then right at the end they give you a massive dose of antibiotics (so if anyone actually does have Lyme, that might just fix them – but it certainly didnât need to cost all that money).
In my friendâs case, the massive dose of antibiotics made her MS flare up and she went blind for two days. It was terrifying and this place tried to shrug it off. Fortunately not long after that scam, my friend was properly diagnosed with MS.
My cousin also suffers chronic disease and is bedridden. She also sent her blood off and was âdiagnosedâ with Lyme. Except Lyme doesnât exist in our country and the ticks here arenât physically capable of carrying it (itâs been tested).
There is a huge scam being perpetrated by multiple actors. I feel like the Hadids may have been taken in by it. Because 3 of them all having Lyme is extremely unlikely.
Thereâs a guy like that around here too- not covered by insurance, you pay out of pocket, and itâs not cheap. Lots of chronic Lyme patients. My 3 rounds of antibiotics were less than $20 total. (The neurologist and cardiologist and MRIs not so cheap but we were ruling out MS because the symptoms are so similar).
Iâm sorry your friend went through such a tough time, I hope sheâs doing well.
Fascinatingly my father just got diagnosed…
He was visiting and collapsed…when he came to he was disoriented. EMT got his heart rate- it was 35 – he was bradycardic
at first local hospital his heart stopped (again- we realized that’s why he collapsed initially)
so he was moved him to bigger better further away teaching hospital that can handle cardiology
Lucky for us, my brother and I were able to reach his reg cardiologist where he lives- a very reputable cardiologist- so we had all the history/info we could need-
My dad is 80- he had a healthy heart- but-suddenly is didn’t want to beat on its own
He had a pacemaker put in.
Next day they come in and say- the bloodwork came back- you tested pos for lyme
They said if its recent as we suspect it is, it is the reason your heart stopped- its called Lyme Carditis!
We waited for the immuno-blot results-
they pin pointed it to about 2 weeks- and guess what? 2 weeks earlier my dad had hiked in heavy tic area in CT where lyme is pervasive…
Bc he was immediately put on antibiotics, they say his additional side effects should be minimal if any-
bc they pin pointed it so fast-
hes on 28 days of antibiotics….
anyway, he could have died! but thank goodness he didn’t…
I don’t know about chronic lyme—- but lyme is no joke
Dont they use some other autoimmune disease excuse for Gigi as to why she lost so much weight? But the symptoms of that disease are actually weight GAIN…?
Gigi I believe has Hashimoto’s. That does usually cause weight gai , but it can really go the other way as well. I have it too and I lost 10kg in less than three months right before I was diagnosed. For me it was because of depression and really bad stomach issues (both can be symptoms) that led me to barely eat anything
Her nose now looks a bit upturned. Wonder if she just had that done. It seems new. Her whole face seems new, as a matter of fact. The supermodels of the last generation did not have this constantly changing face issue. I don’t remember this with Cindy, Naomi, Claudia, Linda or Christie.
Well to be fair, a lot of these girls aren’t “real” supermodels. They’re celebrity nepotism models that I think get cast because the name recognition might be good for a brand (see yesterday’s dead-eyed Kendall Jenner campaign for Burberry). Of all of the current nepotism crop, the only one who seems to me like a real model is Gigi. She seems to know her angles, can convey expression in her eyes & has an athletic look that reminds me a little of Cindy & Linda.
Regarding her surgery, although I think most of this stuff is unnecessary for most of these celebrities, if it is well done I really can’t criticize it. In fact if someone was born with natural beauty and nice features they didn’t even do any work for that, so I think it’s pointless to praise their beauty. It is unearned, and no more deserved than someone who was cursed with ugly genes.
If someone has done an amazing job with their surgeon to create a stunning look, then I do think they can get some praise. They made a plan, put in some effort and came up with a great result. That’s how I feel about Bella. I think she’s lovely and has still retained a unique beauty. Nice work Bella!
I like your point of view on the matter.
Your aunt has a beautiful voice, Oya! I could listen to her narrate my life, tbh. I’m so glad that she’s found healing at a centre and that everything is working for her. I hope she doesn’t miss France too much.
Oya I’m so sorry to hear your aunt has been suffering with it for so long. It’s awful, especially when it goes undiagnosed and damages so much.
I went undiagnosed for only maybe 6-8 weeks, and it still took a full year to “recover”. I still have occasional side effects of it, mostly random anxiety attacks and occasional vertigo. Every time I don’t feel well, my brain starts freaking out that I have it again.
It’s already vastly undetected and under-reported. Climate change is exacerbating it, and I really hope it is studied more and better treatments are found. 3 round of anti-biotics finally knocked it out for me, and the side effects of that were pretty horrible too.
A dear friend of mine was misdiagnosed with her second bout of Lyme and she suffered for a long time before finally receiving treatment. It’s tricky because you have to test at a time when the blood levels are high, but she knew she had it and it was horrible to have the doc refuse her the treatment. She was on disability for a couple of years and is finally okay and went back to work teaching last year.
I too had a specialist refuse me because I only had 2 of the markers for it and they require three! So stupid. Thankfully my regular doctor and another specialist didnât mess around and treated me and retested me for everything.
For the amount of celebrities who claim to have been diagnosed with Lyme disease I feel like itâs something different and chemical relatedâ like fillers, drugs, I dunno but I bet itâs not tick bites. For example long-term heavy duty use of stimulant drugs causes a lot of those symptoms, sometimes even after they are discontinued.
Kind of like how âexhaustionâ and dehydration used to be the go-to celebutante explanation for drug overdose related hospitalizations.