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On Wednesday, September 17, supermodel Bella Hadid posted an Instagram carousel which included photos of her receiving medical treatment. “I’m sorry I always go MIA I love you guys,” she captioned the post indicating that whatever was going on with Hadid medically had forced her to miss New York Fashion Week. The next day, her mother and ex-RHOBH housewife Yolanda Hadid posted her own carousel, which showed an ill Bella in a hospital environment undergoing a procedure. “The invisible disability of chronic neurological Lyme disease is hard to explain or understand for anyone,” she wrote. “After many years I stopped sharing my personal story because I needed an energetic shift, time to focus on my healing rather than absorb other people’s opinions about my journey.”
Yolanda Hadid’s post may have raised more questions that it answered, (especially for those who aren’t well-versed in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.) Below, what we know about Bella Hadid’s condition, her mother’s own health, and their shared diagnosis of chronic Lyme disease.
According to Yolanda Hadid’s post, Bella has been in treatment for her chronic Lyme for a month. This isn’t the longest Bella Hadid has received treatment for her health: in 2023, she posted that she’d recently completed “100+ days of Lyme, chronic disease and co-infection treatment,” and that she finally felt like herself. It’s not clear if Hadid is at the same place or working with the same doctors now, but in 2023 she said she’d be back “when I’m ready.” She also thanked “my mommy for keeping all of my medical records, sticking by me , never leaving my side, protecting, supporting, but most of all, believing me through all of this.”
Bella Hadid began sharing her diagnosis in 2012, alongside her mother and brother Anwar. According to People, Hadid said she suffered from “headaches, insomnia, light and noise sensitivity, brain fog, anxiety, confusion, joint pain, disordered eating, nausea and weight loss and gain” beginning at age 14. According to Hadid, things manifested “more aggressively when I turned 18.”
Infamously, all of this played out on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, where not everyone believed Yolanda Hadid’s diagnosis.
In season 6 of RHOBH, a major plotline was whether Yolanda Hadid indeed had chronic Lyme or rather if she was suffering from “Munchausen syndrome.” As Lisa Rinna read on camera from Wikipedia, Munchausen syndrome — now more often called factitious disorder — is a psychological disorder where “those affected feign disease, illness, or psychological trauma to draw attention, sympathy, or reassurance to themselves.” Rinna was one of the most skeptical, later telling the L.A. Times she almost left the show during her feud with Hadid. Kyle Richards hedged, saying Yolanda Hadid’s symptoms were “a very big umbrella” of potential diagnoses.
Sara Foster, David Foster’s daughter and Yolanda Hadid’s then-stepdaughter, said she also had her doubts. “We don’t comment to our friends on Yolanda’s health. That’s not for us to comment on,” she said on Jenny McCarthy’s podcast in 2016, speaking on her and sister Erin’s behalf. “Only she knows her journey, but what I will say is if you’re capable of continuing to be on a reality show, you’re not dying. Let’s be honest.”
By the time of the reunion, Lisa Rinna said she believed Yolanda about Lyme disease, and that Lisa Vanderpump was really who started the rumor. In 2016, Yolanda Hadid got her breast implants removed on an episode of Real Housewives, after learning there was free-floating silicone in her body. “Your health is your wealth so please make educated decisions, research the partial information you’re given by our broken system before putting anything foreign in your body,” she wrote in 2019, reflecting on also getting her fillers and Botox dissolved post-Lyme diagnosis.
The Centers for Disease Control recognizes that some people who contract Lyme disease may continue to feel ill. However, the CDC advises caution if one’s symptoms are under a broad umbrella: “If you are experiencing fatigue, body aches, or difficulty thinking, it is important to know that there are many possible causes for these symptoms other than Lyme disease. These include other infections, medications, depression, diabetes, and cancer.” They also recommend not calling it “chronic Lyme,” because it implies the cause is an ongoing bacterial infection, “when, in fact, the cause is not currently known.”
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