Do you remember when Wendy Williams fainted on her show? It was Halloween, she was wearing a Statue of Liberty costume, and she explained that she was overheated and is going through menopause. It turns out that Wendy also suffers from Graves’ disease, which causes hyperthyroidism. She’s been having complications from it and her doctor prescribed her to take three weeks’ vacation. Wendy made the announcement on her show yesterday. She explained that she goes to see the endocrinologist twice a year, that her eyes have been bothering her and that she’s having other symptoms. She does have that bug-eyed look that is a sign of hyperthyroidism. She thought some of her issues were due to menopause, but her doctor told her to take three weeks off work while she got her medications stabilized. Here’s some of what she said on her show, and the video is at the bottom.
She thought it was menopause and stress
I’m thinking I’m 53, not quite a year of not having a period. I’m going through menopause and applying for colleges and looking over essays. [My son] got early acceptance into his favorite. Senior year, and then the prom…Her hyperthyroidism is affecting her
My thyroid, my hyperthyroid is attached also to Grave’s Disease. Grave’s disease squeezes the muscles behind your eyeballs so that’s the reason for (opens eyes wide). Along with weight loss, which I haven’t lost weight, I still weigh 146. I lost 50 for 50.On if she has all the symptoms
Along with hyperthyroid and Grave’s disease it promotes nervousness [and] anxiety. No I’m not nervous. Please. I’m over 30 years in this game.Now I can cop to irritability. I can snap your head off. I think it’s just me micromanaging [things].
Trouble sleeping. Oh yes. I wake up, I can’t sleep. Difficulty swallowing. [Looks conspiratorially at audience.] Rapid heartbeat, yes. Intolerance for heat.
When her doctor told her to take time off
What I want to say to women is stop putting everyone first. If we’re not good, they’re not good. Health insurance is really important. Get your pap smears, mammograms, get stuff checked.My doctor has prescribed, as of today, three weeks vacation. I was pissed. I’ll be back in two.
[From Wendy Williams’ show, video below]
Wendy can be annoying, but I like how candid and open she is. I can relate to a lot of her symptoms and I’ve also lost 50 pounds, am going through menopause, and feel anxious and snappy. (I’m so productive though.) I’ve had my thyroid levels checked and they’re normal however. I recently switched from a combination birth control pill to a progesterone-only pill and that helped quite a bit. Menopause is a bitch. That’s good advice for women to put ourselves first, and it’s impressive that she’s following her doctor’s orders and taking a break. It must be hard for her to be away from her show and I doubt I could take that much time off. You get addicted to working and it’s like you have to know what’s happening at your job all the time. I need to meditate more or something.
Wendy’s show issued the following statement:
“Wendy is a true champion and has never missed a day of work. But her health and well-being must be put before all else. Wendy has been openly dealing with her Graves’ Disease for many years in addition to hyperthyroidism. Yesterday, Wendy’s doctor prescribed a necessary three weeks of rest to get her levels and medication in sync. The show will be in repeats during this unplanned hiatus. A live show was produced today so that Wendy could speak directly to her fans and explain her condition.”
Here’s Wendy’s announcement. Get well soon Wendy!
photos credit: WENN and via Youtube. Event photos are from 2-8-18
I’ve followed Wendy since the radio and the Graves disease is definitely not new. She’s been open for years about it. I don’t know if I totally buy this reasoning…I do think something deeper happened that day she fainted, on top of the stress of her husband’s double life being revealed. She hasn’t been the same since that Halloween show.
Autoimmune diseases don’t have to be new to mess you up. They can get worse during periods of stress. Better with diet, climate change, and so on
You’re right. She is different since that day. I hope she gets well soon.
I hope she feels better and I also hope her show is cancelled after this hiatus. Her brand of misogyny is especially toxic because it comes from a woman. It gives men who have an interested in protecting the status quo ammunition and damages how young impressionable women view their world. (E.g. Two weeks ago she said that Aaliyah and the underage girls in the RKelly sex tape were not rape victims because the chose to be there – least of her many many infractions).
Cancel that show and let her spend her days doing something else.
On her last show yesterday she said she was friends with R Kelly. Her audience seemed shocked.
I don’t buy this reason for taking time off but time will tell.
I love Wendy. She is one of my favourite celebs of all time. I hope she gets better soon.
Would graves cause a person to slur and stumble over their words? I watched her last week when I was home sick and she seemed to be struggling a bit.
Graves disease is autoimmune and can take a serious toll on the body.When the thyroid is over active one can feel nervous,highly energetic,and have low to no appetite or eat much and the body metabolizes nutrients faster and caloric need can be at a deficit therefore causing exhaustion,low blood sugar, dehydration ,etc.So yes she could have had the episode of slurred speech and passed out due to an exacerbated state of her condition.
I enjoy Wendy…but lately the belching on live TV without so much as an “excuse me”….is beginning to irritate me. Cleaning out her nostrils and eye boogers…on live TV is so rude. Plus she wolfs down all the food her cooking guests prepare like she hasn’t eaten in six months…while paying little attention to what the guest is saying while she grabs every mouthful she can consume in the five minute spot. That’s irritating to watch too. She has been noticeably snarky to some of her audience members and callers who participate in her tropical trip giveaways. I wish her well. I get a huge kick out of her most of the time…but generally I watch just long enough to hear the Hot Topics segment…then, depending on who her guests are..I usually turn it off.
Wait, what?! She has belched on camera more than once? lol are you serious?
Yes! In the last few weeks it’s happened on 3 or 4 different shows. Something definitely has been really off with her in the last few months. Then recently she started bringing a stand in the audience to lean against when talking to guests.
I agree @Suzanne. I normally love me some Wendy (she sort of filled the giant talk show void the my beloved Oprah left in my life) but things have really changed with her over the past 6 months or so. The constant belching, barely being able to read even the simplest of sentences on her screen-tweets, etc.-no longer having nice comraderie with staff (she aggresively sniped at a surprised Norman on air just the other day and hasn’t had friendlu banter with her producer Suzanne since last season), not understanding when she’s blatantly mixed up words (on the show that announced her hiatus she clearly says that her “ears are leaking” as she used a Q-Tip to dry her eyes. The audience was totally baffled), fainting, etc.
I can only hope that the cause for her hiatus is thyroid related and not a drug relapse requiring rehab as many outlets have reported. Wendy has been very open about her past c*caine addiction and the majority of ppl that I know who have gone through recovery have not done so w/o ever slipping. As they say, it is a marathon not a sprint. I wish her well.
She spoke candidly about her disease a few weeks ago,told her watchers to stop emailing her about her eyes,explained her Graves’ disease.I don’t watch her show really just leave the TV on all day for background noise and sometimes I watch a few minutes of her.She looks and acts nervous,and stressed,and her eyes are bulging more than usual-she needs rest.And I don’t particularly care if her show stays on or not,but wish her the best.
I don’t understand why Wendy keeps denying her recent drastic weight loss. She is normally so blunt and open about things. Lately, she just looks frail, and if not for her giant boobs she would look emaciated. I agree with the previous commenter that she seems to have struggled in recent weeks. Her comments yesterday about R. Kelly being her ‘new friend’ made me cringe, considering his history of sexual abuse of minors. When it comes to her own son, (a teenager), she would be livid if someone abused him. Why is she not outraged at the abuse of another mother’s teen?
I’ve had Graves Disease for 2 years now. It hit so hard and fast that I actually lost my ability to walk. I went into muscle atrophy and was homebound for a over 6 months. It can affect all different parts of your body including – raising anxiety, affecting sleep, raising your body temperature (similar to menopause), and affecting your eyes. Graves can also go into remission and then pop it’s ugly head back up years later and the meds they give you can manage it but at times can act as a yo-yo effect to your body – going from one extreme to the other (slurring words is one example of that).
I don’t watch the show but I feel for her. I’m walking again and have normal thyroid numbers but I still deal with symptoms often. It’s an ongoing battle.
Good luck to you Switchy I have Crohn’s disease witch is autoimmune and can go in and out of remission,so I know what it’s like to struggle with your health.I wish you all the best for achieving remission with as few symptoms as possible 😊
Thanks! I’m in remission now and with physio and meds walking again. I still struggle trying to get back to running but hopefully in the future I can return. But symptoms still come and go – I’ve accepted that some things will be my new normal.
That’s interesting…Wendy also seems to be struggling with her balance and walking, and now only wears flats.
Yup, I’m not surprised as graves can affect your balance. Plus with other such as myself, it drops your pain levels so my body gets super sore very quickly. I used to live heels but had to give them up.
I too struggle with an autoimmune disease. I like how you used the ‘new now’ to describe it. Accepting the diagnosis, being good to myself and focusing on healing, along with relapses has not been fun at all.
I wish you all healing and health and I can sympathize with Wendy with regards to that, but as one poster upthread said her misogyny has been getting worse and some of the stuff she says is totally unacceptable and I have no idea how she gets away with it, especially in the light of MeToo…
*cough* Rehab *cough*
her personal life looks very painful. proof money doesn’t buy happiness
I believe her. That fainting was frightening on stage. The other time was where she was out in the audience and lost her balance and kind of fell/leaned into an audience member. She always pauses a lot when talking,. But I watched a clip one day of a hot topic, and the pauses were longer and she lost her place about what she was talking about. But it didn’t seem to come from being high at all. And the way it showed her leaving the show, out of her heels, changed into flats holding on to the arm of her security or husband after leaving the show was also interesting. And that’s only what we see, but obviously she is struggling with a health issue probably exacerbated by stress.
I never see her show but caught it on Monday when she came back from her flu. I thought she had Graves just looking at her eyes, the poor thing. And she was having issues swallowing. I thought maybe she wanted to vomit and should still have been home. She did belch but made a kind of reference to “this again” or something. My husband noticed her flats. I truly believe she is medically not well. And I liked her hot topics, etc. It’s no different than what we say on this site really!
I have Graves too-I was just diagnosed in January. I kept blaming all my weird symptoms on stress, and menopause. Once I saw a great endocrinologist, and started taking care of myself (besides the prescribed meds, probiotics, vitamins, some Ayurvedic herbs, healthy eating, meditation, walking, less screen/news time) I’m feeling a million times better. I’m not a fan of hers, but I hope with the time away she’s able to get her physical/emotional health back.
My aunt has Graves Disease and was misdiagnosed as bi-polar before they caught the Graves diagnosis and apparently that’s not uncommon because elevated and erratic thyroid levels can impact your mood and behavior pretty severely. I have Graves also (it is a hereditary disease) but it’s much more mild. Just recently I’ve been wondering if I had it all the way back in high school though because I used to have fainting spells.
@ELLE: That EXACT same thing happened to me! Diagnosed out of nowhere as “bipolar” in my early twenties (my family was like, um, “No”) which lasted for about 6 months then disapppeared at soon as it came. Then rapid heart rate, extraordinarily fast weight loss, lack of sleep and swollen thyroid appeared in late twenties. Went to nuclear radiation, thyroid “lit up like a Christmas tree” on scan and Graves was diagnosed.
It’s incredible because once I found a great endocrinologist (it took YEARS of trial and error), she explained to me that many with the disease are falsely diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder (woman moreso than men) when it first presents itself, commonly in our early 20s due to increased energy, chattiness, etc. Thank God I have the family support that I do b/c said group of doctors in my early 20s tried to put me on Lithium and many other drugs to treat a “mental illness” that I never had!! All without so much as giving me a blood test that would have revealed a radically supressed TSH. It is infuriating to me to think of how many young women may get incorrectly diagnosed in this way each day and put on meds they don’t need indefinitely, all while having their true underlying disease go untreated 🙁
Watched daily for years- “if you miss a day, you miss a lot”. After the Daily Mail reveal on her so-called husband, never watched again, never looked back. Apparently I’m not missing much. Who in their right mind is going to ask Wendy anything when she got that going on at home, or care about her analysis on celebrity relationships? Her man is going to leave her so high and dry if she is struggling.
I used to love Wendy, it was my break from the world and it was just silly gossip. However this past year I stopped watching her, she’s so anti women sometimes, always taking the side of the men in any situation (spousal or child abuse claims Thicke for example) that it was off putting. There is enough stupidity in the world, she doesn’t have to keep feeding it. She can be gossipy and smart, just look at this website! I also never looked at her the same after her husbands long time and still ongoing affair was exposed. She’s just a hyprocrite.
I feel for her. Thyroid problems can really mess you up. I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer a few months ago and had a partial thyroidectomy. Until my medications got under control I was exhausted, had brain fog, would forget words mid sentence, and just not myself. It was hard.
AdaRose-hope you’re on the road to recovery and feeling better.