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Christina Applegate has revealed that she was urged to get checked for multiple sclerosis by another Hollywood star who'd noticed her exhibiting one major symptom.
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a lifelong health condition which impacts the brain and spinal cord and causes pain, vision problems and numbness in the body. It's currently unclear what causes MS and there is no cure for it.
Applegate, best known for her roles in Married... With Children and Dead to Me, Applegate was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative disease back in 2021.
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Opening up on her early experience with the disease during a new interview with Conan O'Brien's Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast, the 53-year-old revealed it was actually another celebrity who realised her symptoms could be MS.
When asked about her initial experience with MS, Applegate revealed her first symptoms were numbness in the toes, which occurred in January 2021.
"My toes weren't feeling right," she explained, adding: "Eventually, over those months it grew from my toes to my ankles... from my knees down.
"I was losing balance [and] the pain was extraordinary. When I say numb it's numb but it hurts."
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Applegate then revealed the push to visit a neurologist about her symptoms came from Legally Blonde star Selma Blair. Like Applegate, Blair also has MS, having been diagnosed in 2018.
Recalling her response to Blair's observations, she said: "I was like 'No, there's no way the both of us from the same movie have MS."
Applegate's diagnosis wouldn't come until later on, when she had to pause filming for Dead to Me due to her worsening symptoms.
"What's interesting is that I look back over time and probably for like six years I was having weird things happening," she continued. "Fluorescent lights would bother me... being up on a platform I would get afraid of heights."
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Blair has also recalled her experience of noticing the initial symptoms of MS in Applegate, telling People Magazine that she noticed the changes in her The Sweetest Thing co-star during a playdate for their children.
"I was noticing the symptoms when she was over," she recalled. "I was like, 'You've got to get an MRI.' She did."
Like Applegate, Blair has also been candid about what living with MS is like, revealing in a 2022 essay for The Guardian that she was urged not to go public with her diagnosis.
"My doctors urged me not to go public," she penned. "They said people wouldn’t understand my diagnosis. They worried I wouldn’t get work.
"They said the disease might not progress beyond what I’d already experienced, so why share it?"
