In early 2023, she attended the Critics Choice Awards, where she was nominated for her role in ‘Dead To Me.’ She was accompanied by her daughter, Sadie Grace LeNoble, and carried in her hand her elegant cane, which she has openly used to help her walk due to the difficulties resulting from her illness.
Christina Applegate is learning to live with Multiple Sclerosis.
Christina Applegate’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame
She occasionally attends a public event and is seen walking with a cane.
In November 2022, the actress, barefoot and with her cane, proudly made
her first red carpet appearance since she was diagnosed with MS.
She was honored to receive her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Family and friends by her side
The actress, with family and friends by her side, said in her emotional speech:
“This day means more to me than you can possibly imagine.” It has been about
2 years since Christina Applegate went public with her Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis.
Overcoming hurdle after hurdle
Let’s take a look back at her many journeys – from her battles with health to her early stardom – proving her unrelenting resilience, positivity, and strength. In August 2021, Christina Applegate, the 49-year-old icon since her youthful role of Kelly Bundy in ‘Married with Children,’ shared some bad news with the world. As it turned out, she suffered from a disease without a cure.
On her Twitter account, the actress announced:
“I was diagnosed with MS (Multiple Sclerosis). It’s been a strange journey.
But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition.”
Christina went on to say in her Twitter message: “It’s been a tough road.
But as we well know, the road keeps going. Unless some a***ole blocks it.”
In an added message, Applegate wrote: “As one of my friends that has MS said:
‘We wake up and take the indicated action.’ And that’s what I do.
So now I ask for privacy. As I go through this thing. Thank you xo.”
What is multiple sclerosis?
What consequences will Multiple Sclerosis have for Christina Applegate? It is a neurological disease for which there is no cure and which can cause numerous symptoms, including progressive paralysis. Essentially, Multiple Sclerosis consists of the neurons in our brain losing their transmission capacity, which can affect many bodily functions.
Another actress with Multiple Sclerosis
Multiple Sclerosis occurs relatively more in women than in men.
Actress Selma Blair (the cast partner of Christina Applegate in the film
‘The Sweetest Thing’) announced in 2018 that she suffered from the condition.
It is common to see her walking with a cane because of the disease.
Not to confuse Multiple Sclerosis with ALS
Multiple Sclerosis is different from ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis),
which is what the famous scientist Stephen Hawking suffered from.
ALS often leads to more severe and rapid motor disability. Yet, both types
of sclerosis are mysterious diseases and their development is often unpredictable.
A history of cancer
It is not the first time that Christina Applegate has faced a serious health problem:
in 2008 People magazine reported that she had breast cancer. Later that year,
the actress announced in a statement that she’d been cured completely.
What can medicine do for Christina Applegate?
Multiple Sclerosis has no cure, but there are various options for drugs that
attack the symptoms and possibly slow down the development of the ailment.
This means one can live with the disease for many years.
Life of an actress
Christina Applegate was born in Los Angeles on November 25, 1971, and has been an actress since she was a child. Her role as a bad girl in ‘Married with Children’ (which she played between 1987 and 1997) brought her enormous popularity. Other series and comedies would soon come. In the picture, she’s accompanied by Donovan Leitch and Krystyne Haaje. Christina Applegate became a Hollywood star and an ‘it’ girl of the 90s.
Of course, she hung out with other stars of the era, like Brad Pitt.
Christina Applegate with Johnny Depp
She did charitable work with actor Johnny Depp on Fox Television’s
‘Stars Feed the Homeless.’ Applegate was 16 when this photo was taken.
Roles in big comedies, like ‘Friends’
Christina Applegate starred in the series ‘Jesse’ and won an Emmy for her
appearance on ‘Friends’. Between 2002 and 2003 she appeared in several
episodes of the popular comedy, playing Amy Green, Rachel’s sister.
Samantha Who? Towards maturity
The bad girl grew up and continued to make funny movies and TV series.
One of them, with a title linking to her first big role, ‘Samantha Who?’,
ran from 2007 to 2009.
Christina Applegate: two marriages
Christina Applegate was married twice.
The first time was with Johnathon Schaech and lasted from 2001 to 2007.
Her husband Martin LeNoble:
With Martyn LeNoble, her husband since 2013,
Christina Applegate had a daughter, Sadie Grace LeNoble.
Life with Multiple Sclerosis
Despite multiple sclerosis, life goes on for Christina Applegate.
As she herself says, it’s a tough road, but the road goes on.
Oklahoma researchers find link between MS, diet – Bing video
Sfam_Photo/Shutterstock.com
An Extreme New Treatment Has Cured Patients of MS
HEALTH 10 June 2016. By DAVID NIELD
An extreme new treatment for multiple sclerosis (MS) has been shown
to stop the disease in its tracks, hinting at the possibility of a cure.
In a 24-person clinical trial based in Canada, one person who was previously
confined to a wheelchair was able to live a normal life again after receiving the treatment.
But there’s a catch – the treatment is so severe, it caused one fatality, so the team behind
it is now working on refine the drugs and procedures involved to make them safe for all
MS sufferers.
The new treatment was actually discovered by accident by a team at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute in Canada, through their work with patients diagnosed with both leukemia and multiple sclerosis.
One way of tackling the cancer is by extracting bone marrow cells, killing off the remaining immune cells, then injecting the bone marrow (once purged of cancer) back into the body to repopulate the immune system.
It turns out this immune system ‘reboot’ is also very effective at fighting MS.
The disease causes the immune system to attack the protective coating that shields nerve cells in the brain, spinal cord, and nervous system. And after noticing the positive results on the condition in leukaemia patients, the researchers decided to trial the new technique just on MS patients, to try to flush out the immune system and effectively start again.
The treatment is designed to stop the progress of MS, but in many cases, it’s actually reversing the progress of the disease, suggesting that the nervous system can sometimes repair itself after MS takes hold, reports Clare Wilson for New Scientist.
The trial began in 2000, and overall, 17 of the 24 people involved in the study saw their MS halted or reversed. It’s not an easy treatment to undergo, because of some rather dramatic and debilitating side effects, and it’s currently only being offered to those with severe MS – patients who are essentially left without a functioning immune system for a period of time. That said, its potential is huge if doctors can figure out how to make it safer.
“Everyone is hesitating to use the ‘c word’, but these patients are cured,” senior scientist Michael Rudnicki of the Ottawa Health Research Institute in Canada, who wasn’t directly involved in the research, told Vox.
[One of the trial patients] “Jennifer Molson was in a wheelchair in a rehab centre, unable to work. And now she’s skiing, she’s working, she got married, and got her driver’s license. I think this is going to be the new standard of care for progressive MS.”
Has anyone ever come Multiple Sclerosis – Bing video
The multiple lives of MS patient Jennifer Molson — after
her chemotherapy treatment (L) and then free of disease.
This isn’t hype: Canadian doctors just reversed severe MS using stem cells.
Jennifer-Molson.pdf (StemCell network.ca)
Jennifer Molson, who had chemotherapy-stem cell transplant therapy back in 2002,
is now MS-free: “I haven’t had any MS symptoms in 14 years. And I’m not on any MS medications.”
The “miracle” was made possible by using the same technique used in leukemia patients wherein doctors take bone marrow from a donor and transplant it into a recipient. But this time, they used the technique to entirely wipe out the patient’s immune system, thereby eradicating the problem. They then put back stem cells, which begins to grow into a new immune system in the patient.
While the procedure may sound logical, it must be stressed that it is a very aggressive and risky treatment, and the possibility of death, while undergoing treatment, is entirely possible.
Reversal of Multiple Sclerosis Via Risky Stem Cell Treatment Confirmed (futurism.com)
Jennifer Molson was 21, juggling a day job and night school to pursue her dream of becoming a cop, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She woke up one morning with pins and needles in her hand, and within a week she couldn’t move her left arm.
By 2001, five years later, she was living in the Ottawa Hospital under 24-hour care,
getting around using a cane, walker, or wheelchair. When she was discharged on weekends,
to spend time with her then-boyfriend Aaron, she had to rely on him for her every need.
He’d cut her food into bite-size pieces, and bathe and dress her. When she lost control of her bladder or bowel, he’d help her go to the bathroom.
“I had no feeling from the chest down,” Molson says. “I could touch something boiling on the stove and burn myself. I could touch fabric without knowing whether it’s sandpaper.” For patients like Molson, with a severe form of MS and no response to the available medications, there’s little hope.
Two years later, her life had taken an abrupt turn. “I walked down the aisle and danced
at my wedding, something I had always dreamed of doing,” she said of her marriage to
Aaron in 2003.
Now, 15 years later, Molson is still skiing and kayaking on the weekends.
She works as a research assistant at Ottawa Hospital.
What happened is something even esteemed medical specialists are venturing to call a “miracle”: The particularly aggressive MS that was on track to disable Molson entirely — and potentially kill her — is now virtually eliminated from her body.
The game changer for Molson was an experimental chemotherapy and stem cell bone marrow transplant she got in 2002 as part of a study in Canada. Molson was one of a small cohort of 24 people with MS who received the high-risk therapy. Of the 24 patients, 70 percent saw the progression of their disease halted or reversed.
Their experience, documented in a paper published today in the Lancet, is the first to describe any MS treatment that fully stops the disease over the long term without MS medication.
“Everyone is hesitating to use the ‘c word,’ but these patients are cured,” says Michael Rudnicki, director of the Regenerative Medicine Program and the Sprott Centre for Stem Cell Research at the Ottawa Health Research Institute, who was not involved with the research. “Jennifer Molson was in a wheelchair in a rehab center unable to work. And now she’s skiing, she’s working, she got married, got her driver’s license. I think this is going to be the new standard of care for progressive MS.”
“My greatest hope was that the disease would stabilize”
MS affects about 2.5 million people around the world, particularly women in more temperate climates like Canada and the northern US.
Instead of protecting the body from foreign invaders, in patients with MS the immune system turns on its host, wreaking particular damage on the myelin, a protective coating around the nerve fibers in the brain and spinal cord.
Eventually these attacks can severely damage and destroy the nerves and myelin, interrupting the communication between the brain and body and also leading to
symptoms like numbness, trouble walking, and even blindness.
But not all patients’ symptoms manifest in the same way. People with “relapsing remitting” disease experience MS in fits and starts — their symptoms show up for a few days or weeks, followed by weeks, months, or even years of remission.
For most patients with this version of the disease, those periods of remission get smaller over time and eventually disappear, moving them into a new phase of disease known as “secondary progressive MS.”
Javier Zarracina/Vox
Other patients experience something even more insidious and grinding.
It’s called “primary progressive MS,” and instead of bouts of remission they see
a continuous increase in symptoms accompanied by a decline in health.
Molson had secondary progressive MS at the time of her treatment in 2002.
She had tried medication, and nothing worked.
Her doctor, Mark Freedman (one of the authors on the Lancet paper), told her the stem cell transplant wasn’t going to cure her, but at best, if the procedure went well, her health wouldn’t worsen.
“My greatest hope was that the disease would stabilize,” Molson says. “I looked at Aaron, [now] my husband, and said, ‘If I don’t do this, and it proves to work, I’d be kicking myself if my disease progressed.’ It felt like I really didn’t have a choice.”
How stem cells gave Molson a new immune system.
Once she was accepted into the study, doctors began the procedure. They first put her through a short course of chemotherapy to stimulate the production of hematopoietic stem cells, which regenerate the immune system, in her blood. They then hooked her up to a machine that cycled through her blood 32 times over the course of seven hours, in order to collect stem cells. Those stem cells were then purified, wiped of any memory of the disease, to later be transplanted into Molson through a blood transfusion.
The most trying part of the treatment: Molson had to endure 10 days of chemotherapy. The doctors were essentially killing off her diseased immune system, only to later replace it with a new one in the form of her own purified stem cells. But the experience was grueling. Molson likened it to “hell.”
“I had a feeding tube because I was constantly nauseous,” she says. “I couldn’t keep my food down.” Growing a new, disease-free immune system meant Molson’s body had to relearn how to defend itself from disease-causing bacteria and viruses.
She had to get her childhood vaccines again. But she was also more vulnerable to infection, and wound up developing a blood infection, shingles, and serious bladder infections shortly after the transplant.
Javier Zarracina/Vox
“It took me at least a year before I started to feel human again,” Molson says.
Around a year and half after the transplant, she began to slowly return to some likeness of her pre-MS self: She was walking without using a cane, she could shop in the grocery store again, and eventually she didn’t need to nap every afternoon.
“I thought, Maybe I can go back to work,” she says. By 2006, four years after her treatment, she returned to work full time. (She chose to work at the Ottawa Hospital, she said, after seeing firsthand how research can change people’s lives.)
Molson, now 41, says, “I haven’t had any MS symptoms in 14 years. And I’m not on any MS medications.” That’s a big deal given that the medications usually involve daily pills or frequent injections.
But treatment has also left her several unpleasant side effects. Because the chemotherapy damaged her ovaries and put her into early menopause, she’s on hormone replacement therapy — and wouldn’t be able to get pregnant. While she was given the chance to harvest her eggs, she declined. “I couldn’t look after myself, how could I raise children?,” she says. “Remember, I wasn’t supposed to get better.”
She also has to be extra cautious about any exposure to infections. “I was at the dentist three weeks ago, and I had to be on antibiotics before I went for a teeth cleaning,” she says. “There are still parts of the immune system that you have to be careful about.”
Molson’s hair never fully grew back, and she also contends with daily heartburn and digestive issues, which she takes medications for. Otherwise, Molson says she feels as good as she did when she was 21, before her diagnosis. “I don’t take anything for granted. I got a second chance at life.” Only 5 percent of MS patients will be eligible for this treatment.
Drs. Freedman (R) and Atkins (L), two researchers on the Lancet paper.
Ottawa Hospital
The study that gave Molson this chance was impressive in its scope and its execution — conducted at multiple hospitals by hematologists and neurologists in Canada and lasting nearly 20 years, from conception to publication. It built on decades of basic research about MS, stem cells, and the immune system, including years of experience using the treatment in patients with blood and bone marrow cancers like leukemia and lymphoma.
Other scientists have already seen promising results in MS patients using similar treatment protocols, but none have managed what Atkins’s team has: to completely halt the disease’s attack on the brain —no relapses, no new MRI lesions in all surviving patients — and for such a long follow-up period.
Several researchers who were not involved with the experiment — and who typically
are reserved about novel treatments — told Vox they were excited and hopeful for the
treatment’s potential to benefit others with the disease.
“I think this is going to be the new standard of care for progressive MS,” said Rudnicki.
“It’s exciting — an important proof of principle,” said Jeffrey Gelfand, a neurologist specializing in MS at the University of California San Francisco.
Tim Caulfield, a University of Alberta professor who has been tracking stem cell research, noted the difference between this robust finding and the unfounded claims in stem cell clinics around the world: “This is a fascinating development … [and] a good example of
the difference between the real clinical research and what is being marketed by the clinics providing unproven therapies — you can’t simply ‘inject’ stem cells and expect significant results.”
Still, there are major caveats to consider. This study was small and lacked a comparison or control arm. Similar, larger studies are needed to confirm the results, and it’s not clear what will happen to patients like Molson in the much longer term.
Ottawa Hospital hematologist Harry Atkins, the researcher who led the study, pointed out that only about 5 percent of MS patients would be eligible for this treatment: again, the minority who have an aggressive form of MS that’s not responding to any treatment.
Javier Zarracina/Vox
And not everyone in the study had results like Molson’s. Of the 24 patients, 70 percent
saw the progression of their disease halt or reverse, but the other 30 percent continued to worsen.
That minority who didn’t respond, the researchers think, had MS that was already too far along by the time of their treatment. “At early stages, once the immune system quiets down, the brain can partially heal itself, so the disability tends to get better,” Atkins explained. “But as time goes on, the brain can’t repair itself.”
One patient died, which puts the potential for death from this procedure at around four percent, and severe infections after stem cell treatments — the kind Molson picked up, or worse — are also common.
Since there are other MS medications that are much less toxic and can help some patients, doctors only recommend considering this therapy as a last resort. (Theoretically, the treatment could be done in most blood and marrow transplant centers associated with major hospitals, Atkins said, but there are only a few that perform the procedure. Interested patients can contact the MS Society for more information.)
There’s also the cost: Atkins put it at about $50,000 to $65,000 per patient — and that’s
if nothing goes wrong. (Although, MS medications now cost about as much for patients every year in the US so this therapy could actually be a money saver.)
And there are questions about the very long-term effects.
It’s not clear what the next 10, 20, or 50 years look like for patients like Molson.
“We know in the long term survivors from groups that have their transplants for cancer and they’re cured and they live a long time,” Atkins said, “that they have a higher incidence of the general population of other diseases [such as heart disease and cancers].”
Already, Atkins and his team have been working on other applications for this stem cell procedure. They managed to reverse “stiff-person syndrome” — a rare neurological disease that causes the muscles in the body contract to the point of complete immobilization — in one patient. And there’s talk of applying the treatment to myasthenia gravis, another incurable autoimmune disease.
Cures in medicine are extremely rare. It’s still too early to label this treatment a cure for MS. “We have only followed our patients for up to 13 years,” Atkins said, “so it’s hard to say what the next 10 to 20 will bring. You’d want to know that before you’d call this a cure.”
For now, though, Atkins will use the word miracle. “It still appears like a miracle to me
to see patients recover, and get back to the things that they were supposed to do in life,”
he said. “It is very rewarding to see and it wasn’t what we expected, and we are overjoyed
about it to know this treatment can help people in that way.”
“I took a leap of faith,” Molson told New Scientist.
“I felt like I would be kicking myself if I didn’t take this chance.”
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the worldwide prevalence of MS.
>>> Life looks really different through an MRI machine – YouTube
Currently, MS treatments involve trying to limit the effects of MS and reduce the number of flare-ups, though they’re not a cure, and don’t work for all patients. At this point, scientists still aren’t sure why MS causes the immune system to attack the nerve cells, but think the reboot might wipe such programming from its memory.
The results have been published in The Lancet.
Source: This isn’t hype: Canadian doctors just reversed severe MS using stem cells.
DOCTOR REVEALS How She Cured Her Autoimmune DISEASE! | Cynthia Li & Mark Hyman – YouTube
Doctors Say These Are the Best Multivitamins for Women Over 50 to Take (msn.com)
Mark Hyman, MD 845K subscribers
2,457,018 views Oct 2, 2019.
The Doctor’s Farmacy with Mark Hyman M.D.
Get my top tips for optimal health and vitality: https://bit.ly/MarksPicks Think about how different our medical system would be if all doctors were required to have an extreme health crisis before practicing medicine. It’s through those toughest times with our own health that many of us turn to Functional Medicine, as we realize conventional care isn’t getting us what we need. But sometimes, being so involved in treating others’ diseases makes it difficult for doctors to even see our own symptoms for what they really are.
This week’s guest on The Doctor’s Farmacy, Dr. Cynthia Li, is here to share her personal journey through autoimmunity and realizing her symptoms had deeper meaning.
Dr. Li received her medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. She’s also practiced as an internist in many settings, including Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, San Francisco General Hospital, and St. Anthony Medical Clinic serving the homeless.
She currently has a private practice in Berkeley, CA and recently published her first
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