Christina Applegate Shares Surprising Coping Mechanism Amid Multiple Sclerosis Battle

Christina Applegate is sharing more details about her health journey.

The Dead to Me star is opening up about the unexpected way she has been able to cope with her multiple sclerosis, which she was diagnosed with in 2021.  

“I find reality television very useful,” Christina told James Corden during the Aug. 8 episode of his SiriusXM show This Life of Mine. “That’s kind of it for me.”

And her love for the reality TV universe and beyond isn’t a secret she’s trying to hide.

“Anyone who knows me well knows that it's on 24/7 in my room,” the 52-year-old continued. “I don't leave my room very often. I know that sounds really depressing but it's kind of like, I just need to sleep sometimes. Yeah, reality TV.”

And when it comes to her favorite reality show, Christina doesn’t have a preference.

“Everything. Give me any of it,” she said. “Give me a Vanderpump [Rules], give me a Below Deck, give me a [Real] Housewife, even give me Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsay—I'll watch like nine seasons of that in like two days.”

The Anchorman alum went on to explain what it is about reality TV that helps her to cope with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disorder that attacks the central nervous system and diminishes the ability for impulses to travel between one’s nerves and their brain, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.

“I love watching the imperfections of real people, really," she shared. "Like wow, those people exist, I love that. That’s why I love reality TV because they freak me out that they walk this earth acting like that.”

This isn’t the first time the Married…With Children alum has been open about her experience with MS. She previously shared how important humor is to her journey.

"I make these jokes because if I don't, I'll suffocate," she said on a March 2024 episode of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert podcast. "I'll be done."

And she clearly isn’t done.

After receiving a standing ovation during the 2023 Emmys, the actress quipped to the crowd, "You're totally shaming me with disability by standing up."

Read on to see more of Christina’s journey with multiple sclerosis.

Christina Applegate shared she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2021.

"Hi friends. A few months ago I was diagnosed with MS," she shared on her social media channels that August. "It's been a strange journey. But I have been so supported by people that I know who also have this condition. It's been a tough road. But as we all know, the road keeps going. Unless some a--hole blocks it."

"Oh, by the way, I have a disease," she joked during her November 2022 Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony, her first public appearance since her MS diagnosis. "Did you not notice? I'm not even wearing shoes."

Christina believes her MS journey actually began "six or seven years" before her 2021 diagnosis.

"I noticed, especially the first season [of Dead to Me], we'd be shooting and my leg would buckle," Christina explained during a March 2024 interview on Good Morning America. "I really just put it off as being tired, or I'm dehydrated, or it's the weather. Then nothing would happen for months, and I didn't pay attention."

By the time she was shooting the Netflix series' third and final season, the actress said she was "being brought to set in a wheelchair."

"I couldn't move that far," she recalled, "so I had to tell everybody because I needed help."

The Dead to Me star captioned this photo of her cane collection amid her battle with MS: "Walking sticks are now part of my new normal."

Joined by her daughter Sadie Grace LeNoble, Christina had a simple message for multiple sclerosis while attending the 2023 SAG Awards: "F U MS."

After a receiving standing ovation at the 2023 Emmys, the Married...With Children alum quipped, "You're totally shaming me with disability by standing up."

"I make these jokes because if I don't, I'll suffocate," Christina shared on a March 2024 episode on Armchair Expert, explaining why she often pokes fun at her condition. "I'll be done."

"I have 30 lesions on my brain," she said on the same podcast. "My biggest one is behind my right eye, so my right eye hurts a lot."

Legions are caused by the immune system attacking the myelin sheath around nerves, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Trust.

Christina hasn’t held back when it comes to sharing her journey. 

"It sucks," the Anchorman actress told late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel of her daily struggles with MS. "I'm not going to lie. I think anyone who has MS isn't going to be like, 'This is the best thing that ever happened to me!'"

When talking about her day-to-day life with the disease, Christina told Good Morning America in March 2024, "I live kind of in hell."

"But I might get to a place where I function a little bit better," she added. "Right now, I'm isolating, and that's kind of how I'm dealing with it—by not going anywhere because I don't want to do it. It's hard." 

Christina credited her Sweetest Thing costar Selma Blair—who was diagnosed with MS in 2018—for urging her to get tested for the disease.

"She said, 'You need to get checked for MS,'" Christina recalled during her GMA interview. "If not for her, it could've been way worse."

Christina confirmed that Dead to Me will likely be her last onscreen credit, telling Vanity Fair in May 2023, "I can’t even imagine going to set right now."

"I’m probably not going to work on-camera again, but I'm so glad that I went out with someone who is by far the greatest actress I’ve ever worked with in my entire life," she said of costar Linda Cardellini, "if not the greatest human I’ve ever known.

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