For Bella Hadid, the battle with Lyme Disease is a daily struggle.
The model went on Instagram Story to detail the many symptoms the she experiences on a daily basis amid her health struggles.
“What we suffer daily. With no cure. #lymedisease,” she wrote alongside an infographic on the disease’s symptoms from Palestine On A Plate, adding, “The truth. The invisible disease.”
She also shared a closer look at the infographic, highlighting the almost thirty symptoms that affect her – including headaches, brain fog, insomnia, sensitivity to light and noise, anxiety, confusion, nausea, disordered eating, joint pain, and weight gain and loss.
“Every day I feel at least 10 of these attributes without fail … since I was probably 14, but more aggressively when I turned 18,” she wrote.
Bella, her mom Yolanda, and brother Anwar were diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2012 – however, it’s thought they may have been infected years earlier.
According to the CDC, Lyme disease is transmitted through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks and affects the joints, the heart and the nervous system. Symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a skin rash.
Back in 2016, Bella was honored by the Global Lyme Alliance for her work on bringing awareness to the crippling effects of the disease.
“Life isn’t always what it looks like on the outside, and the hardest part of this journey is to be judged by the way you look instead of the way you feel,” she said in her speech, later adding, “I know what it feels like to not want to get out of bed from bone pains and exhaustion and days on end of not wanting to socialize or be around people because the anxiety and brain fog just isn’t worth it. After years of this, you begin to get used to living with the sickness, instead of getting cured and moving on with your life.”
Other celebrities have also opened up about their struggles with Lyme disease.
Avril Lavigne previously shared details of her health struggles with Billboard, telling the outlet in a 2018 interview, “I was in bed for f–king two years. It’s a bug — a spirochete — so you take these antibiotics, and they start killing it.”
“But it’s a smart bug: It morphs into a cystic form, so you have to take other antibiotics at the same time,” she continued, and, in her case, “It went undiagnosed for so long that I was kind of f–ked.”
It had gotten to a point where she felt like she was going to die. “I had accepted that I was dying,” she tells the outlet. “And I felt in that moment like I was underwater and drowning, and I was trying to come up to gasp for air. And literally under my breath, I was like, ‘God, help me keep my head above the water.'”
In January of this year, Justin Bieber revealed that he had been diagnosed with the disease.
“While a lot of people kept saying justin Bieber looks like s–t, on meth etc. they failed to realize I’ve been recently diagnosed with Lyme disease, not only that but had a serious case of chronic mono which affected my, skin, brain function, energy, and overall health,” he wrote, confirming a report about his depression being the result of Lyme disease.
His wife Hailey Bieber also went on social media to thank Yolanda, Bella and Gigi for helping her understand her hubby’s condition better.
