Christina Applegate used the November 10 episode of her MeSsy podcast to raise a question she says has followed her for years. Could her breast implants be behind the symptoms doctors once blamed on multiple sclerosis?
Applegate, 54, put it to co-host Jamie-Lynn Sigler directly. “I’ve been thinking this for years,” she said, according to E! Online.
Christina Applegate Discusses Health Concerns on Podcast
Weeks earlier, on the October 20 episode of MeSsy, Christina Applegate told listeners she had been misdiagnosed with MS, the condition she first announced in 2021. She has been candid about her health since that first announcement, E! Online reported.
Now she is starting over, publicly, with a microphone in front of her.
She Questions Breast Implants as Possible Cause of Symptoms
Applegate had a double mastectomy in 2008. A routine MRI that year found early stage breast cancer. She was 36. She also has a BRCA1 genetic mutation, which raises cancer risk, and she chose the surgery because of it.
The implants she received afterward are the ones she is questioning. She told Sigler she is “way overdue for having them replaced.” Then she described a worry she says has nagged at her for roughly five years: what if they’re leaking and poisoning her?
She mentioned reading a study about the problem presenting as MS, and said she plans to look into it.
Just Jared added context from the Cleveland Clinic, which describes breast implant illness as a collection of symptoms that may be related to implants. The clinic says the exact cause is unknown, that it may relate to autoimmune or inflammatory responses, and that providers diagnose it by ruling out other conditions. Applegate has not said she has it. She said she is looking.
Applegate Feels Back at Square One After Misdiagnosis
Most people would hear “you don’t have MS” and celebrate. Applegate did the opposite.
She recalled a doctor walking in and saying “Congratulations, you don’t have MS.” Her response, on the October 20 episode: “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.”
Her explanation was simple. She hasn’t gotten better. “If anything, I’ve gotten worse,” she said, per E! Online. She told Sigler she has every symptom of someone with MS, and that many illnesses mirror it, which makes a new answer harder to find. Her summary of where that leaves her: “I’m back at square one.”
A name for an illness is a kind of map. Take it away and the symptoms stay exactly where they were.
Health Questions and the People Around Applegate
Applegate shares a teenage daughter with husband Martyn LeNoble. The household has lived with an MS label since 2021. Christina Applegate has questioned if her breast implants could be causing her health issues. Now the label is gone and the illness is not.
Her line about everyone else being happy is the sharpest thing in this story. The people around her heard good news. She heard that the last few years of answers had been wrong. Same doctor, same sentence, two completely different reactions in one room.
Long illness does that to the people closest to you. Relief and dread arrive at the same moment, and they rarely land on the same person. Saying it out loud, the way Applegate did, is what keeps a family from quietly assuming everyone feels the same.
She also refused to walk away from the community she found. On the October 27 episode she told MS listeners, “You guys are my people,” and said she still feels part of the community and will keep speaking out for them.
Christina Applegate has not shared a new diagnosis, and she has not said whether she will have the implants removed or replaced. For now, the question is on the table and the answer is still out.
Sources: Just Jared, E! Online
