Brian Austin Green first stole our hearts as David Silver in the couldn’t-miss-sitcom, 90210, and as a resident heartthrob and heartbreaker, we felt drawn to the character who wore his “bad guy” image like a badge of honor.
From there, Green has given us a number of characters to both love and loathe, but one thing that has remained constant is adoration from fans who have followed his journey from the very beginning. In his career through entertainment and within his personal life, he’s been open and honest about both the joys and the struggles he’s faced. When his health took a scary turn several years ago, he faced the unimaginable. Struggling with the most ordinary of tasks, Green was largely immobilized for quite some time, and had to learn several basic functions over again as if he were a child.
On a recent episode of Cheryl Burke‘s podcast, Sex, Likes and Spray Tans, Green opened up about his health conditions and what life looked like for him as he lived through them. So what medical challenges was Green facing at the time, and how did he overcome them? Let’s take a look.
What symptoms was Green having?
In his chat with Burke, Green shares that he spent four years trying to recover from strange and unusual symptoms, and in all honesty, it seemed like a confusing set of circumstances that threw him for a loop each day.
“I’d spent four and a half years recovering from stroke-like symptoms without ever having had a stroke, but I couldn’t speak. Then these neurological things started happening after the vertigo, and that was — it was four and a half years of my life. I got to the point where I shuffled like I was a 90-year-old man.”
The things happening in Green’s body didn’t make sense, and while he would eventually go on to be diagnosed with two separate conditions, those who suffer from either can attest to neither really seeming to fit what was going on in his body, either.
In addition to what was happening to Green physically, he was also experiencing changes in his mental and emotional health; being unable to properly speak, eat, read, or walk is something no otherwise- healthy adult would have been prepared for. It’s a terrifying thought, to inhabit a body that is suddenly working against you at every turn.
What was Green’s diagnosis?
Green would ultimately receive a diagnosis of vertigo and ulcerative colitis, but after being bedridden for several months, he decided to attempt to look at his health through a new lens entirely. When no doctors could help him, he decided to find one in a different specialty altogether, someone he said specialized in Eastern medicine.
“It was all undiagnosed by Western medicine, so I ended up having to finally find a doctor that is much more into, like, kinesiology and Eastern medicine.”
Green brings up one instance in particular that let him know something was wrong with his body: “I had such brain fog that I reintroduced my best friend of like 25 plus years to my sister who he had also known for 25 plus years.”
After adjusting his diet and incorporating kinesiology, he began to feel better, and could attribute many of his symptoms to stress, and severe allergies to both gluten and dairy. Having gone through a healing journey physically and receiving help from a therapist, Green is at a place in his life where he feels a deep excitement for the future, and as a newly engaged man. We’re thrilled for him.