Singer Selena Gomez has been lauded for explaining the changes that happen to her body when she takes medication for her lupus.
The 30-year-old singer was previously open about her diagnosis, but has recently been subjected to bad comments about her appearance.
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Selena told her fans in a live broadcast on the TikTok platform that when she takes the drug, her body “retains a large amount of water.”
“I’d much rather be healthy and take care of myself,” she said.
“My medication is important, and I think it’s the one that helps me,” she added.
Lupus is an incurable disease that affects the autoimmune system, in which the body’s immune system becomes overactive and attacks normal tissues.
Symptoms can be controlled with medication. In 2017, Selena revealed that she had undergone a kidney transplant in connection with her lupus.
Kate Appleby and Chris Clark, both 30, suffer from lupus, and spoke to the BBC about Selena’s frankness and openness about her experience with the disease.
“Having someone like Selena stand up and speak out has the full support of me, and likely the entire lupus community,” Chris said.
Kate, who has around 40,000 followers on Instagram and says she has also been the victim of body image mockery, said Selena’s courage was “extraordinary”.
She said: “I went from being very skinny to being a bit of a chubby woman. You know, you go from a situation where the disease is completely obvious to you to a situation where your disease is hidden.”
She added, “I received a lot of criticism from people commenting not only on how my appearance has changed, but also on how I dealt with my disease.”
According to the British Health Service, lupus affects more women than men.
Chris said that the medication he is taking changes his appetite.
“Everyone thinks ‘steroids’ are great, you build muscle. But it’s not that kind of steroid.”
He continued, “It makes you feel hungry, so you want to eat more and trying to control your appetite is much more difficult.”
What is lupus?
According to the NHS, lupus is a complex and poorly understood condition that affects different parts of the body.
Its symptoms range from mild to life threatening.
There are some types of the disease that affect only the skin, but the term is usually used to describe a more serious form of the disease – called “lupus erythematosus”.
This type affects many parts of the body, including the skin, joints and internal organs.
People may have had the disease for a long time without knowing it until it suddenly gets worse.
Symptoms include extreme fatigue, rash (especially on the face, wrists, and hands), joint pain, and swelling.
Even mild cases of the disease can be painful and have a significant impact on the quality of life of the affected person.
However, the symptoms may be similar to those of more common conditions, so it is often difficult to diagnose the disease.
Chris says it means a lot for Selina to raise awareness about the disease, as he hadn’t even heard about the disease when it was first diagnosed.
“At the end of the day, what Selina does saves lives,” Kate adds.
“Back to the mental health issues when I was diagnosed, if there was someone like Selena at that point, in terms of being loud and talking about it, it would have made a huge difference for me personally.”
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