Christina Applegate has given her social media followers an update on her health, years after revealing she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021.
Sharing a video of herself Sunday on Instagram, the Dead to Me actor explained she can sometimes have a flare-up of the autoimmune condition affecting the brain and spinal cord when she is stressed.
The clip shows her standing in front of a door while she stares off into the distance before quickly making an inappropriate gesture with one of her hands.
“For people who don’t understand MS,” she captioned the post. “When we get stressed or upset our symptoms get worse. I had something happen to me on Friday and I have fallen like 5 times. Legs are busted. So if you know someone with a disease like this, maybe think…”
Commenters were quick to reply to the post to wish Applegate well, whether through kind messages or heart emojis.
Fellow actor Jennifer Love Hewitt commented: “Sending you all my love,” while Heather Dubrow of The Real Housewives of Orange County wrote: “Love youuuuuu.”
In August 2021, Applegate revealed she had been diagnosed with MS a few months earlier, and production on Netflix’s Dead to Me had to be halted for five months while she began treatment.
She later revealed in December 2024 that she unknowingly experienced one of her first symptoms of MS while filming the pilot for her Netflix comedy, recalling a sequence in which her character Jen was running across a field.
“I remember falling that day. Hi, first sign of MS!” Applegate said on an episode of her MeSsy podcast with Jamie-Lynn Sigler, featuring Dead to Me creator Liz Feldman.
Feldman then chimed in, saying, “I remember you losing your balance a couple of times but it was very hard to figure out. I remember one time it was like really late at night, we’d been shooting probably 14 or 15 hours, it seemed completely reasonable that anybody would be collapsing.”
Speaking about slowly realizing Applegate had a condition, Feldman added: “There’s no handbook for this. I could just sense that A, she was scared and B, that something was wrong, something in her body was not working the way that she wanted it to. I told her so many times that it’s just a TV show; we’re making a TV show and it’s so silly, you know, at the end of the day!
“I knew Christina well enough to know that something major had to be going on because she’s an extreme professional.”
Applegate has also spoken openly about the challenges that come with the neurological disorder, including feeling severely depressed because of the debilitating pain.
