Christina Applegate’s Health Journey, From Early MS Symptoms to Learning She was Misdiagnosed

Christina Applegate says she’s feeling “worse in some ways.” The actor recently revealed that, after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021, she doesn’t have the central nervous system disease as her doctors concluded those years ago. Applegate shared this medical update during two episodes of the “MeSsy” podcast, which she co-hosts with fellow actor Jamie-Lynn Sigler, who does have MS. “This may come as great news, but to me I’m back at square one. It’s hard to say that (my doctor) came into my room and said, ‘Congratulations, you don’t have MS,’” Applegate shared in part one of the podcast, crying. “I was, like, not happy at all. Everybody else was so happy.” For Applegate, this means chasing new answers and a new diagnosis to attribute to the debilitating symptoms that have impacted her career and the quality of her personal life. “I don’t know what’s going on with me,” said Applegate. “And that’s going to be an ongoing investigation that my doctors are going to get into, just to find out what has been happening since 2021. Why did this happen? I had every symptom of someone with MS. Every single one.” Applegate’s life took a sharp turn five years ago when she was on set and began noticing changes in her body. They lined up with the symptoms typical of MS, the “potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord,” per the Mayo Clinic. MS can create “communication problems between your brain and the rest of your body” and “permanent damage or deterioration of the nerve fibers.” The diagnosis seemed to explain Applegate’s pain, exhaustion, sickness, hospitalizations, and need for a cane and wheelchairs. Now, she’s found herself with more questions. Ahead, how Applegate and her medical team came to think she was living with a chronic autoimmune disease and how they discovered she never had it at all. August 2021: Christina Applegate Reveals MS Diagnosis Applegate revealed she had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis on social media. “I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition,” Applegate said on X. It’s been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a------ blocks it.” The star ended her post by asking her followers for privacy as she navigated her new normal. She was diagnosed while filming the last season of Netflix’s “Dead to Me,” but recalled during an ABC News interview that her legs would give out while filming the first season. “My symptoms had started in the early part of 2021, and it was literally just tingling on my toes,” Applegate told ABC’s Robin Roberts in the interview. “And by the time we started shooting in the summer of that same year, I was being brought to set in a wheelchair. Like, I couldn’t walk that far.” To cope, she turned to humor. “My humor shield keeps me OK. But of course, down on the inside, you feel the things. I do it to kind of deflect and also make people not scared to be around me,” Applegate said during an appearance on “The Kelly Clarkson Show” in December 2022. “When people see me now as a disabled person, I want them to feel comfortable that we can laugh about it,” she added. November 2022: Christina Applegate Opens Up About the Emotional Toll of MS Applegate’s first symptoms appeared during a dancing scene while filming “Dead to Me.” She felt unbalanced, she told the New York Times in November 2022. She also started noticing that her tennis skills weren’t quite as strong as they used to be. “I wish I had paid attention,” she said. “But who was I to know?” While reflecting on her diagnosis, Applegate admitted she was angry about what was happening to her body. “Acceptance? No. I’m never going to accept this. I’m pissed,” she said. June 2023: Christina Applegate Gives an Acting Update Speaking to Variety, Applegate said her disease makes it hard to act, and she wasn’t sure how long she’d be able to continue doing so. “We don’t know what my future as an actress is going to be,” she said. “How can I handle it? How can I go onto a set and call the shots of what I need as far as my boundaries, physically?” The year before, in November 2022, Applegate told Variety that she believed her role in “Dead to Me” could be her last acting job. “I’m pretty convinced that this was it,” she said, adding that she still intends to be involved in the entertainment industry, whether that means producing projects or doing voiceover work. Her body’s capacities were deteriorating. “With the disease of MS, it’s never a good day,” she told Vanity Fair in May 2023. “There are just certain things that people take for granted in their lives that I took for granted. Going down the stairs, carrying things — you can’t do that anymore. It f------ sucks. I can still drive my car short distances. I can bring up food to my kid. Up, never down.” The actor explained that she has a friend who lives with her during the week and helps her take care of her daughter. On weekends, she has a caretaker. According to the star, it’s better that way so she doesn’t get overwhelmed by too much social interaction. “I also don’t want a lot of stimulation of the nervous system because it can be a little bit too much for me. I like to keep it as quiet and as mellow as possible,” she said. January 2024: Christina Applegate Jokes About Her MS Diagnosis at the Emmy Awards When Applegate walked on stage as a special guest at the 2024 Emmy Awards, she had an emotional reaction to the standing ovation that awaited her. But she also met the moment with her trademark humor. “Thank you so much, oh my God,” Applegate said as she looked out at the crowd. “You’re totally shaming me with disability by standing up; it’s fine, OK,” she teased, adding, “Body not by Ozempic.” The star later recalled some of her most well-known roles, and when the audience started to clap in response, she cracked another joke about her disability: “We don’t have to applaud every time I do something.” Applegate was nominated for outstanding lead actress in a comedy series for her role in “Dead to Me,” but she didn’t win the award that night. A few months later, in a March 2024 interview with ABC News, Applegate said she barely remembered what happened on stage that night. “I actually kind of blacked out. People said, ‘Oh, you were so funny,’ and I’m like, I don’t even know what I said. I don’t know what I was doing. I got so freaked out that I didn’t even know what was happening anymore.” But she maintained she felt “really beloved, and it was a beautiful thing.” On June 4, she called her Emmys appearance “the hardest day of my life. (I) started at 11 in the morning and didn’t get home until 9:30. I think I slept for two days straight after that. I couldn’t even function.” March 2024: Christina Applegate Announces a New Podcast Applegate teamed up with Sigler of “The Sopranos” fame, who was diagnosed with MS more than 20 years ago, to start a podcast called “MeSsy.” It premiered on March 19, 2024. In it, the two discuss their journeys with the disease and have entertainment industry stars, friends and experts on as guests. “She’s the only person who really knows me,” Applegate said about Sigler in a People cover story. “I can talk about anything with her. ... We would talk on the phone for hours, laughing and crying. And then we were like, ‘This is helping us. Let’s record this.’” The podcast, however, is not only about MS. “That would be boring,” Applegate said. “I don’t want to talk about it that much.” August 2024: Christina Applegate Marks Three Years Since Her Diagnosis Following the third anniversary of her diagnosis, Applegate opened up about the day she received the news in an August 2024 episode of “This Life of Mine with James Corden.” “They did an MRI in my brain, and it was a Monday, and we were at work. And my doctor said, ‘I really need to get on a Zoom with you to go over your MRI results,’” she recalled. “And I opened up my Zoom, and there he was, and he just looked at me, and he goes, ‘I’m so sorry.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And he goes, ‘Here’s a picture of your brain, sorry.’ And there’s like 30 lesions all over my brain. And I went, ‘No, please don’t tell me this. Please don’t.’” March 2025: Christina Applegate Reveals the Number of Times She’s Been Hospitalized Since her diagnosis in 2021, Applegate said she’s spent a lot of time in the hospital. “For three years since I was diagnosed, I’ve been in the hospital upwards of 30 times,” Applegate said during an episode of the “MeSsy” podcast. “That is unimaginable, OK? They’ve done every test known to man on me, put so much radiation into my body from CT scans to everything else,” she added. March 2026: Christina Applegate Publishes Her Memoir Applegate’s memoir “You With the Sad Eyes” was published on March 3, 2026. In it, she says her body has let her down. “When I wake up, I often can’t get my arm to move far enough to grab the cup of water by my bed or my phone from its charger,” she wrote. She’s prone to infection, and her stomach is unpredictable, sending her to the emergency room regularly. MS, she wrote, is exacerbated by trauma. The abuse and stressors she writes about enduring throughout her childhood and adulthood seem to align with her physical symptoms. “I start vomiting, almost like my body is trying to stop the noise, too,” she wrote. “Then I end up in the hospital again. I just want everything to stop. But it won’t stop.” The fatigue, said Applegate, is the symptom that keeps her down the most. “One of the worst side effects of the illness is the exhaustion. It feels as though I’ve been on a three‑day‑long sleepless bender,” she revealed. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times while promoting her book, Applegate discussed her track record for speaking candidly about MS in interviews and on her podcast. “We need a community. We need a bunch of us talking to each other — caretakers and children of people with MS and all this stuff,” she said. “I just want to have a kumbaya with everybody right now because there’s so much sadness with this disease.” October 2026: Christina Applegate Reveals She Was Misdiagnosed With MS What Applegate thought was MS for five years broke down her body and took an emotional toll on her and her family. Her balance troubles and tingling in her toes escalated into having to wear diapers for incontinence, caused her pain that landed her in the hospital, and required treatment including radiation. She gained 45 pounds from taking steroids combined with immobility. Her condition took a toll on her intestines, too, causing abdominal pain, nausea and vomiting. Applegate was hurt and angry, but she committed to being there for her daughter, “so I’ve got to fight. I got to fight,” she told People in 2024. But MS was never the cause, she later learned. Beginning in April 2026, Applegate took a seven-month hiatus from recording “MeSsy.” She and Sigler had previously announced they’d be taking a short break from the podcast to promote their books, but when the show resumed, Sigler handled hosting duties on her own. Applegate returned in October 2026 for the episodes in which she announced she’d been misdiagnosed. “It’s like I feel like I let everybody down, you know?” Applegate told Sigler during her comeback episode of the podcast. “It’s this weird feeling of I became like — you and I — the poster children for MS, and all that I did for everything that I was doing. It’s like I had a reason. I had a reason as to why my day sucked every day. And now I don’t have a reason, and it’s very unnerving, and it’s really confusing for me.”