October 28, 2026Updated October 29, 2026, 10:16 a.m. ET
Christina Applegate shares candid update on her health after revealing she was misdiagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
On the Oct. 27 episode of her “MeSsy” podcast, the “Dead to Me” star, 54, told listeners that things were “getting worse” with her health and she was having trouble getting out of bed in the morning.
“I actually timed it today: It took me 10 minutes to be able to take my pillow off, get out of bed and get up, at which point I almost couldn’t walk to the bathroom, and now I have a walker sitting next to my bed because of what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Applegate said it was a change from what she experienced before.
“That’s what I still live with,” she said. “And I’ve never had that before. I was able to sit up and stuff. Things get worse, or they’re just new. Something new happens. It took me 10 minutes just to raise my head, just to move without excruciating pain or weakness.”
Applegate also said that she “recently lost all this weight,” which is “pretty bad” a thing. “Actually, I need to win some,” she said. “…I lost too recently and I don’t know what’s going on.”
Applegate’s health update came after she announced on October 20 that she does not have multiple sclerosis, although she was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease in 2021. Her doctor recently told her she had been misdiagnosed.
What are Christina Applegate’s symptoms?
Applegate does not yet have a new diagnosis. She previously explained that she still had the same symptoms, including fatigue and pain, but that she no longer had an explanation for them, so she felt like she was “back to square one.”
The Emmy winner has spoken openly about her health over the past five years, since she was first diagnosed with MS. In 2024, she launched the podcast “MeSsy” with actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who was diagnosed with MS.
In an episode of the 2025 podcast, Applegate said she had been hospitalized “over 30 times” due to her symptoms previously thought to be due to MS. “They did every test on me known to man, they put so much radiation in my body, from the CT scans to everything else,” she said.
Applegate and Sigler plan to continue their “MeSsy” podcast despite the former’s misdiagnosis. On their October 27 episode, Sigler said the show was “about the messiness of life in general” and was not “meant to be just focused on MS”, although that was the “original reason we were talking candidly with each other”.
Applegate cried in the final episode after Sigler told her she was in the “great fight” of her life and was “worthy of far more possibilities and love than you give yourself.”
“Having to stop working was where all of this hit me like a train,” an emotional Applegate said. “I spent most of my life at work, and I didn’t have anything to deal with. I didn’t have to. I had work. It was my playground, and it was my safe space. And not having it, and sitting here for all these years not feeling good, everything fell apart inside.”
Applegate retired after the end of her Netflix series “Dead to Me.” In 2023, she told the Los Angeles Times that she “couldn’t imagine getting up at 5 a.m. and spending 12 to 14 hours on set; I don’t have that in me right now.”
Gn entert
