Christina Applegate's 13-Year-Old Daughter Sadie Reveals POTS Diagnosis
Christina Applegate‘s daughter is opening up about her own health issues.
During the Tuesday (June 25) episode of her mom’s MeSy podcast, the 52-year-old Dead to Me actress’ daughter Sadie appeared as a guest and revealed that she has been diagnosed with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS).
Keep reading to find out more…“It affects my heart, and so when I stand up, I get really, really dizzy, and my legs get really weak, and I feel like I’m going to pass out,” Sadie, 13, explained. “I have fainted before, and I have gone unconscious.”
POTS is a condition that “causes a number of symptoms when you transition from lying down to standing up, such as a fast heart rate, dizziness and fatigue. While there’s no cure, several treatments and lifestyle changes can help manage the symptoms of POTS,” according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Although she received her diagnosis a few months ago, Sadie said that she’s been dealing with the condition “for a long time,” recalling visiting the school nurse “multiple times a day” in the sixth grade because she often felt like she was going to pass out.
According to Sadie, the school said that her conditions were attributed to anxiety.
“They wouldn’t do anything for it, and that definitely was hard, because I genuinely felt so sick, and I was in a lot of pain,” Sadie admitted. “It definitely hurt me, physically and emotionally.”
Sadie said that she first started to experience symptoms in 2020, explaining that “every time I stood up, I just felt like my whole world was just about to go crashing down and my vision would get blurry.”
Christina, who revealed her multiple sclerosis (MS) diagnosis in 2021, admitted that at first she didn’t realize what Sadie was dealing with.
“I feel very guilty because… I didn’t really understand what was happening with her,” Christina said. “I feel so horrible that we didn’t pay attention to it…I’d never heard of this either. I’m so sorry, Sadie Grace.”
She also said that part of the reason why she didn’t understand Sadie‘s struggles is because she didn’t see the symptoms at home.
“At home, you were fine,” Christina said, before comparing her daughter’s experience with her own as someone living with MS. “It’s kind of like us. We get out in the world and the stresses and the anxiety of the world bring upon our symptoms much worse than they would be if we were in the safety and the coolness of our own homes.”
Christina then went on to praise Sadie for opening up publicly about her POTS diagnosis.
“I hate it for you, my darling…and I’m here for you and I believe you,” Christina said. “And thank you for bringing this to light and bringing awareness. A lot of people don’t know about this.”
Also during the episode, Sadie shared that she suffers from misophonia, a disorder “in which certain sounds trigger emotional or physiological responses that some might perceive as unreasonable given the circumstance,” according to Web MD.
“My two worst are breathing and chewing,” Sadie shared.
She also admitted that navigating her own health issues has helped her emphasize with her mom’s MS journey.
“When my mom’s like, ‘I’m in pain right now. I’m having tremors.’ If I didn’t have [POTS], I probably would be like…I don’t know what you’re talking about. But I actually have tremors from POTS,” Sadie explained. “It’s definitely a lot easier to understand what she’s going through when I have something I’m going through as well.”
If you missed it, Christina recently cleared the air amid concerns about her mental health.