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Poor Chrissy Teigen. Just after launching her sunglasses line with Quay Australia, she headed to her home state of Utah for what should have been a fun, relaxing visit. She was there to attend the wedding of two friends, but her trip took a scary detour when her lips swelled up as a result of altitude sickness:
Chrissy Teigen… took to social media on Saturday to share how her lips got swollen after a crazy reaction due to altitude sickness.
“Very upset and saddened that my own birth state, Utah, has chosen to poison me with terrible altitude sickness,” Teigen, 33, first tweeted, followed by a photo of her swollen lips. “Did u know angioedema can be triggered from altitude sickness? Learn something new every day! My lip about to explode. Goodbye world.”
“It’s so big it’s shiny and hard like glass,” the cookbook author also tweeted.
Teigen, who is in Utah for her friend Meghan Mackenzie and Luke Dillon’s wedding, then shared a video of her lying down with the caption, “This is premeditated murder if you ask me.”
“Luke, Meghan, why have you chosen to get married in a place which would try to destroy me?” she jokingly asked.
In another Instagram Story clip, she is then seen inhaling oxygen from a can to help with the swelling. “Oh yeah, that’s good,” she says.
[From Yahoo!]
Altitude sickness (or “mountain sickness,” as it’s sometimes called) is caused by decreasing amounts of oxygen at altitudes higher than 4,800 feet (1,500 meters) above sea level. People are most likely to experience the illness when they travel in less than a day from lower altitudes to 8,000 feet (2,438 meters) or higher, but a person’s overall health may lead them to experience it at lower altitudes. Symptoms can include mild headaches and weariness to the more extreme life-threatening buildup of fluid in the brain or lungs, and death. The term “Altitude sickness” actually refers to three different illnesses: acute mountain sickness (AMS), high-altitude pulmonary edema (HAPE), and high-altitude cerebral edema (HACE).
If people experience altitude sickness while climbing, they are supposed to stop climbing, rest, stay warm, and take acetaminophen (Tylenol). If symptoms don’t subside, they should move to a lower altitude, preferably about 1,640–3,280 feet (500–1,000 meters) lower than they were when the symptoms developed. One of the treatments, which Chrissy was given, is to receive oxygen at 2–4 liters per minute to improve the amount of oxygen in the blood.
I’m glad that Chrissy was able to get to a doctor, and I hope that she’s feeling better and that she didn’t miss the wedding. Hopefully she was traveling to Utah for more than just a couple of days right around the wedding and so was able to rest a bit beforehand. I’d not heard of anyone getting swollen lips from altitude sickness before, and I can imagine that that was pretty scary, especially if Chrissy didn’t realize right away why that had happened (though maybe she did, since she’s from Utah). Years ago I attended a conference in Denver and didn’t understand why I suddenly had a terrible headache, felt tired, and developed a cold. Someone who was with me and who visited Colorado frequently laughed and said, “That’s altitude sickness!” I took some Tylenol and rested for a bit and felt much better.
did u know angioedema can be triggered from altitude sickness? learn something new every day! my lip about to explode. goodbye world pic.twitter.com/3uMfbCJYn5
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) August 17, 2019
this is premeditated murder if you ask me pic.twitter.com/ql3SwETQiJ
— christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) August 17, 2019
Glad she’s okay. Shallow aside- she is gorgeous without makeup and even with a balloon lip!
I thought this too! She’s quite stunning sans makeup.
Kylie and the other Kardashian -Jenners are now going to blame their faces on altitude sickness.
“How dare you think my ever-changing face is thanks to my plastic surgeon?! Clearly you’ve never been skiing!” ::sniffs::
Only Chrissy bottom lip is blown up, so they would have to use a different excuse.
Lmao thought the same thing
Right and I’m sure this has nothing to do with all the fillers she’s injected herself with. Eye roll. It must be exhausting being her.
Except this is a legit symptom of altitude sickness.
except she legit stuffs herself with fillers.
@jenny except absolutely NO ONE with any experience in fillers would have work done immediately prior to an event.
This one puts everything on social media. EVERYTHING!!!!!
seriously. i’m afraid to see what limits she will take this to.
This is why I like her.
She isn’t afraid to be real…. flaws and all.
She’s about as real as the Kardashians
I agree Singstress. Her “oversharing” never bothered me. Unlike the Kardashians, she seems like a good Mom and loving wife. I don’t get the judgment thrown her way on here. She’s innocuous.
I don’t dislike her,and I didn’t know about this symptom of altitude sickness,so good to know -but the whole time I was reading the article thinking that this was probably something she made a huge deal about at her friends’ wedding.
She can turn anything into a huge ordeal and make it about her,but I still think she’s pretty harmless.
I used to live in Albuquerque. I knew of several people who got swollen lips like this when they came to visit me from California. Altitude sickness is no joke!
I have to chuckle a bit more, I live at 8500 feet and my husband works around 10,000 feet. I have to remind myself this whenever people come to visit that they need to take it easy. When I first moved here I really over did it first day, I wasnt able to drive for a while because I would get tunnel vision that would end up total black out blindness for a few moments. Took a few months to get over it
Holy sh*t! That’s alarming
I have to chuckle a bit more, I live at 8500 feet and my husband works around 10,000 feet. I have to remind myself this whenever people come to visit that they need to take it easy. When I first moved here I really over did it first day, I wasnt able to drive for a while because I would get tunnel vision that would end up total black out blindness for a few moments. Took a few months to get over it
Altitude sickness is no joke! Quimby, I get the same symptoms from altitude sickness as you do. I went to Colorado last year for a bachelorette part and could barely climb a flight of stairs, I was so out of breath. And that’s coming from someone who climbs stairs on my walk to work every day!
The brightside is that… I got drunker a lot quicker lol
I believe I suffered from a version of this in a couple of low cost flights last month, and it was a horrible stabbing pain on the upper part of my left eye, and i felt like some air was stuck somewhere… it stopped after a while, but it was really painful. I googled it and the term I found was aerosinusitis? I have sinusitis so it made sense and the description fit exactly what i felt. but this altitude sickness also makes sense to me so.. anyone with a similar experience?
My 20-year-old nephew was in Nepal two years ago, hiking with a group, and he suffered altitude sickness. He was air-lifted to a hospital (somewhere in Nepal) and stayed in the hospital for a week and then flew back home to the USA.
That’s crazy. I am from Utah and actually live at sea level in Australia now. I go home once a year but I’ve never experienced this. My Australian husband tends to feel it for a couple of days but luckily I think I’m still acclimated. That looks super painful!
I live at sea level. We went to Maui and also stayed at sea level, but then we tried to drive up to the top of the volcano one day.
At about 8,500 feet, I got super nauseated. We stopped the car, but it didn’t get better, so we started going back down. The nausea lifted, and I was fine again.
I’ve had that reaction to a milder extent on other trips too, by going too high too fast, but I’ve also found that if I stay a few days at about 8,000 feet, then I can go up to 10,000 feet with no ill effects.
Which means when spouse and I finally take our trip to see Manchu Pichu, we’re going to have to be a little tactical about where we visit first. It’s got to be no higher than 8,000 feet in elevation.
I’ve lived at 6000 ft for almost 20 years but I still remember the symptoms when I first arrived (and I was a runner): shortness of breath, headaches, exhaustion, and constant dehydration no matter how much I drank. When guests visit from sea level they’re always perplexed about feeling awful and it takes me a minute to realize, duh! Altitude sickness!