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Comedian and actor Miranda Hart has revealed that she has been diagnosed with Lyme disease, which has left her struggling with chronic fatigue.
Hart, who has also announced that she is now married, has been speaking about her condition on Radio 4’s Today programme.
Hart told the show: “I was basically bed-bound – and housebound. There’d be times where I’d look at a glass of water, and think ‘I don’t know how to pick that up’.
“All anyone wants is to be heard, accepted, loved and seen… and when you’re not – particularly in a medical situation – it’s the worst.”
Hart, who has written a new book about her experiences over the past 10 years called I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, added: “I thought I need to research this whole wellness expertise and dialogue that’s out there, but I was at bed at home alone, the doctors didn’t know what to do with me and I couldn’t have a cold plunge or go on a yoga retreat.
Continuing, Hart said that her own research led her to discover “10 keys, which I call my treasures, to living well” which she says have genuinely helped her on her journey with the disease.
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection which can lead to severe physical and mental problems if not diagnosed at an early stage. It is typically spread to humans via infected ticks, which will have already bitten an infected animal such as deer, mouse, vole or hedgehog. Other insects also carry the disease.
Individuals who spend the majority of their time outdoors are most at risk of being exposed to the ticks which spread the disease, the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence (NICE) states.
Hart, who says in her new book the diagnosis left her at “rock bottom”, recalls that she has traced the condition back to her teenage years in the US state of Virginia, where she got a “tick-borne illness… and that’s when my symptoms started”.
Despite the setbacks the disease has caused her, Hart said that the diagnosis was a “relief,” adding “I mean, being misunderstood and misjudged is one of the hardest things about these kind of conditions.”
In her book, Hart says that she got the diagnosis a few months into the first Covid lockdown in 2020. “ I had Zoom calls with two experts who both confirmed – from a delightful smorgasbord of blood tests – that I had been living with a constant, reactivated Lyme disease,” the comedian explains.
She adds that what she “didn’t know: most people can get an acute disease/virus/infection, and their immune system dispels it over a few weeks of being very unwell (like Covid, for most). Or they take specific antibiotics to treat it.”
Hart says that her body was unable to fully detoxify the disease due to a “gene that increases susceptibility to immune dysfunction and the fact that the disease was never identified at the time”.
As the bug remains active in a person’s condition, this can mean that the body is unable to deal with other illnesses that people contract over time. Hart says that for her this included: “Epstein-Barr/glandular fever/herpes/shingles and some other nasties.”
When announcing her wedding news, Hart said that it “hasn’t all been doom and gloom.”
“Someone put a ring on it,” the Miranda star said, without revealing her husband’s identity.
“I got married at 51, and it’s just so lovely.
“I’d written Gary for on-screen Miranda and it wasn’t until I was 49 that I met my person, and I met him and it’s a little undercurrent in the book.
“I’m not going to reveal how we met as that is a little bit of a twist.”