Persone di alto profilo aiutano a dissipare i miti sull’artrite infiammatoria
Caroline Wozniacki, vincitrice degli Australian Open ed ex numero 1, ha sorpreso gli appassionati di tennis nell’ottobre 2018 quando ha rivelato la diagnosi di artrite reumatoide. Ha spiegato il suo shock in una conferenza stampa al termine della stagione WTA (Women’s Tennis Association), descrivendo la fatica, il dolore e altri sintomi della malattia autoimmune che aveva sperimentato mentre gareggiava ad alto livello.
Mentre la pop star 20enne Clairo, alias Claire Cittrill, aveva accennato alla sua giovane artrite reumatoide ai suoi fan via Twitter, non è stato fino a novembre 2018 quando, in un’intervista alla rivista Dazed, ha condiviso pubblicamente le sfide di vivere con una grave artrite infiammatoria.
Jennie Garth, di Beverly Hills, fama 90210, ha sfruttato la sua celebrità per aumentare la consapevolezza durante il mese di sensibilizzazione sulle malattie reumatiche (RDAM) nel 2016, dopo la diagnosi di sua figlia con artrite idiopatica giovanile. Perché ha RA, il commentatore sportivo ed ex quarterback dei Pittsburgh Steelers Terry Bradshaw ha assunto il ruolo di portavoce per RDAM 2017.
L’artrite reumatoide colpisce le persone che non sono donne sopra i 50 anni
È potente collegare un volto familiare con una condizione medica sconosciuta. Molti giovani sotto i riflettori, come l’attrice Grace Bannon e la cantante-attrice Megan Park, possono aiutare a illuminare la malattia per le persone nella loro fascia di età. Uomini come l’apprendista-vincitore e American Ninja Warrior ospite Matt Iseman contrastare il mito che RA colpisce solo le donne anziane. Gli atleti ci mostrano come la forza e l’abilità possono coesistere con la malattia cronica nel mondo moderno – e, forse la cosa più importante – possono anche ispirare le persone che stanno sperimentando segni precoci e sintomi di artrite infiammatoria a cercare un trattamento per una condizione potenzialmente pericolosa per la vita.
The Benefits of Connecting With a Wide Audience About Arthritis
What’s more, says the fashion designer and former figure skater Michael Kuluva, contemporary artists, actors, and entertainers can influence a younger or more social media savvy audience. “Celebrities and other high-profile people who have a following can really raise awareness within a demographic,” he says. “When more celebrities bring attention to arthritis, we get closer to finding a cure.”1
Danielle Collins
Alamy
Danielle Collins has battled her way to the top of the WTA Tour. Unlike many tennis prodigies who turn pro as teenagers, Collins opted for a college scholarship and became a two-time NCAA singles champion at the University of Virginia. Her steady progression up the rankings accelerated this year, thanks to her run to the semifinals of the Australian Open in 2019 and a No. 23 overall ranking.
That is why the tennis world was stunned when after this meteoric rise in the women’s game, Collins announced that she had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. “As a professional athlete, you are constantly reminded that your body is your temple,” Collins revealed on her Instagram page in early October 2019. “Everything is physical for me, and I’ve come to appreciate how both mental and physical conditions are aligned — how every muscle and joint in the body is in tune with one another. My health is the utmost of importance to me and I’m ready to take on the fight of rheumatoid arthritis.”
Despite her continued success on the court, Collins revealed that she had not been feeling well for some time. “But it has been somewhat of a relief and completely validating to understand the cause behind my pain,” she said in an article published October 9, 2019, by Reuters. “I am certainly not the first person to be diagnosed with a chronic illness, and I really feel for all of the people who are out there struggling.”
Collins said she would heavily involve her team to identify the best approach to manage the disease. She believes this will include adjustments to her diet as well as to her off-court training, conditioning, and playing schedule to allow her body to have the recovery time it needs. “I’m looking forward to embracing this next challenge in life,” Collins told her Instagram followers. “Without a doubt, every healthy day is a gift and I am 100 percent committed to keeping strong and continuing to battle on and off the tennis court.”2
Claire Cottrill, or Clairo
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Singer, songwriter, and producer Claire Cottrill, often known by her stage name, Clairo, went viral in 2017 with her lo-fi electro-pop hit “Pretty Girl.” The video features Cottrill singing at her bedroom computer about a young girl who is willing to change who she is to attract the attention of her love interest. To date, the video has received over 23 million views.
After releasing her EP Diary 001 in 2018, Cottrill revealed to Dazed magazine that she has been dealing with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) since she was 17. “Even just going downstairs would hurt so much,” Cottrill said. “The internet gave me freedom.”
At first, she told the British magazine, she tried to hide her disability from her fans. Now, at age 20, she says she believes opening up about JRA has helped her take her songwriting to the next level. “I didn’t want it to be real, and a part of me thought the more I suppressed it, the more it would just go away,” she said. “It feels really good now that I’ve finally allowed myself to let it be a part of me. Ever since I let myself identify with it — I actually do have a disability that I’ve been hiding — I’ve been writing the best music I’ve ever made.”3
Caroline Wozniacki
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Just months after winning the Australian Open, her first Grand Slam title, and becoming the No. 1 player in women’s professional tennis, Caroline Wozniacki was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. “In the beginning, it was a shock,” she said. “You feel like you’re the fittest athlete out there. That’s what I’m known for, and all of a sudden you have this to work with.”
The Denmark-born Wozniacki comes from an athletic family. Her father, Piotr Wozniacki, was a professional soccer player from Poland. Her mother, Anna, played for Poland’s national volleyball team. Wozniacki was born in Denmark after her father went to play professional soccer in Denmark. She is the first woman from a Scandinavian country to hold the No. 1 ranking on the WTA Tour. Wozniacki’s older brother, Patrik, has played professional soccer in Denmark.
Wozniacki, who has won 30 WTA titles, including three tournaments in 2018, began to suspect she was experiencing more than the usual strains and bruises of being a tennis player this past summer. “After the U.S. Open, I had to figure out what was going on,” she said. “But at the end of the day, you find a plan. … And thankfully, there are great things now that you can do about it.”
Now engaged to former NBA All-Star David Lee, Wozniacki plans to come back to the WTA Tour in 2019 and compete for the top spot again. “I’m very proud of how I’ve been so positive through it all and just try not to let that hinder me,” she said. “I’m happy that I’m done with the season, so that I can control it a little bit more, and figure out a plan how to control it even better in the future.”4
Megan Park
George Pimentel/Getty Images
Megan Park, a Canadian actress and singer, is best known for her role as conservative Christian cheerleader Grace Bowman on ABC Family’s The Secret Life of the American Teenager. But the private information she was keeping under wraps back then was that she’d been living with rheumatoid arthritis since she was a teenager. As she told People magazine, “I had all the classic symptoms: extreme joint swelling, different pain, the inability to do certain things that everyone else could. That’s when I knew that something wasn’t right.” Park went public in 2015 about her diagnosis in partnership with Joint Decisions, an educational initiative that supports and empowers people living with RA.5
Kathleen Turner
Howard Earl Simmons/Getty Images
Sultry stage and screen actress Kathleen Turner, best known for her energetic and seductive roles, was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1992. Ever since, the two-time Golden Globe winner and Academy Award-nominee has been outspoken about RA in the hopes of helping others. Turner wrote about her struggles with rheumatoid arthritis symptoms in her 2008 memoir, Send Yourself Roses. She said that it torpedoed her sex life and led to her reliance on alcohol. But exercise has worked wonders for her current health turnaround, according to the UK’s Daily Mail. “‘Pilates, baby! Twice a week. Pilates saved my life,” she says.6
Aida Turturro
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Aida Turturro, one of the stars of the HBO classic series The Sopranos, has been living with rheumatoid arthritis for years: She was first diagnosed at age 12. Turturro, who earned Emmy nominations in 2001 and 2007 for her role as Tony Soprano’s sister Janice, was one of the first spokespersons for RA and is still passionate about helping others with rheumatoid arthritis. As she told USA Today, “I have good days and bad days. Mornings tend to be the hardest times to get going.”7
Terry Bradshaw
Paul Drinkwater/Getty Images
Terry Bradshaw knows a little bit about leadership. As the quarterback of four Super Bowl–winning Pittsburgh Steelers teams, Bradshaw’s courageous ability to deliver deep passes to his wide receivers while receiving crushing hits makes him an icon to football fans today, even though he hasn’t played the game in over three decades. In September 2017, Bradshaw took on a new leadership role, helping lead the American College of Rheumatology’s Simple Tasks campaign for Rheumatic Disease Awareness Month (RDAM).
“You don’t have to be an old athlete like me to wake up with sore joints,” Bradshaw says. “Fifty-four million Americans live with rheumatic diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, and most of [those conditions] don’t have anything to do with age — or getting sacked three million times.”
A few years ago, Bradshaw was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. To offset some of the weight gain caused by his medication, Bradshaw needed to exercise, regardless of the cavalcade of injuries from his 14-year pro football career in the 1970s and early 1980s, when unnecessary roughness was more a theoretical than an actual penalty in the NFL.
“I try not to ever sit around and go ‘When is this coming to an end?’” Bradshaw told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Cause that’s what people do: ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve had a great month, a great year, when is this coming to an end?’ ‘Oh my God, I’ve had a wonderful life. Am I getting cancer today and dying tomorrow?’ I don’t look at life like that. I approach every day, every morning, the same way: jacked up!”8
Tatum O’Neal
Richard Showtell/AP Photo
In 1974, Tatum O’Neal won an Academy Award at age 10 for her performance in Paper Moonopposite her father, actor Ryan O’Neal. She went on to star in films such as The Bad News Bears and International Velvet. Much later in life, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and went public about the condition. “I’ve got to get ahead of it,” she told Arthritis Today magazine, describing her goals to lead a healthy lifestyle that includes eating wild salmon and doing regular Pilates and core work. 9
Kristy McPherson
Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Pro-golfer Kristy McPherson has been playing the links since she was just 7, but she was diagnosed with Still’s disease — a rare form of arthritis — just four years later. Doctors first told her that she’d need to stay away from sports, but a rheumatologist who treated her at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston told her that even as a person with RA, she could still do whatever she wanted. “All I needed was that one doctor tell me that,” McPherson says. “That’s when I went back to playing sports.” Now, she often speaks with young people about living with the disease.10
Glenn Frey
AP Photo
While the topic of Glenn Frey’s rheumatoid arthritis was largely kept under wraps prior to this rock legend’s death in January 2016, it became a source of controversy when it was reported that the medication he was taking to treat his RA may have caused other health problems and contributed to his demise. According to the Arthritis Foundation, experts not directly involved in his care say, “It is unlikely that RA directly caused his death, or that the medication he took for RA somehow caused ulcerative colitis, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes ulcers and inflammation in the inner lining of the colon and rectum.” Frey, who was a founding member of the superstar group the Eagles, had rheumatoid arthritis for 15 years before passing away at age 67.11
Rosalind Russell
John Springer Collection/Getty Images
Famous for her roles in the classic films Gypsy and His Girl Friday, actress Rosalind Russell was diagnosed with severe rheumatoid arthritis in 1969. Although her cortisone treatment caused what she called “chipmunk cheeks,” Russell refused to hide away, instead devoting herself to raising RA awareness until her death in 1976. Two years later, the Rosalind Russell Medical Research Center for Arthritis was founded at the University of California San Francisco to honor Russell’s commitment and courage. Since 2014, it has been known as the Russell/Engleman Rheumatology Research Center to also honor the pioneering doctor and clinic founder who treated her.12
James Coburn
Henry Clarke/Getty Images
At the height of his career, James Coburn, star of The Magnificent Seven and Our Man Flint, was sidelined by rheumatoid arthritis. But two decades later, he bounced back in a big way, winning Best Supporting Actor at the 71st Annual Academy Awards for his role in Affliction. Coburn credited his pain relief to an alternative approach to treating RA, including fasting and taking methylsulfonylmethane (MSM). According to ABC News, his RA had deformed his body and left his hand twisted. “You start to turn to stone,” he said. “There was so much pain that … every time I stood up, I would break into a sweat.” Coburn died in 2002 at age 74.13
Grace Bannon
Rose Thorn Photography
Diagnosed with Still’s disease when she was just 15, Grace Bannon, who appears on ABC’S The Middle, spoke at two Arthritis Foundation conferences in the summer of 2016 to help raise awareness about juvenile arthritis. As she wrote, “It’s really easy to go down the rabbit hole of, ‘Poor me, the victim.’ It’s fine to allow yourself to have feelings of ‘Why me?’, but you can’t stay there. You have to push yourself to turn this situation into a positive.” She’s currently dealing with a flare-up after more than a decade of being pain-free, but she believes “that there is another side of the coin of this disease, and that strengthens me to not feel sad for myself, and I know I can overcome it.”14
Christiaan Barnard, MD
Getty Images
Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the famed South African surgeon who performed the first human heart transplant on 53-year-old Louis Washkansky in 1967, had health issues himself. Dr. Barnard had rheumatoid arthritis, which forced him to end his surgical career in 1983. He spent his last years on the lecture circuit, dividing his time between Europe and Cape Province in South Africa, where he had a farm. He died in Cyprus in 2001.15
Golnesa ‘GG’ Gharachedaghi
JB Lacroix/GettyImages
When she was about 27, Golnesa “GG” Gharachedaghi, who appears on Bravo’s Shahs of Sunset, started to notice that her hands were going numb in her sleep. When they started to swell and turn blue a month later, she sought medical advice that resulted in an RA diagnosis two years later. She’s seen an assortment of specialists and rheumatologists over the past several years, “and I still haven’t found a treatment plan that completely works for me,” she says.
For the last six months, she’s been using nonpsychoactive strains of cannabis that, she says, have eased her pain significantly. “I’ve even been able to sleep through the night,” she says. Living in the public eye when you have a debilitating health problem isn’t always easy, but she’s grateful she has a public forum to talk about the disease. “In the autoimmune disease world, I have a lot of social media followers. A lot of people who have it feel ashamed or embarrassed because RA has the word ‘arthritis’ in it,” she says, “and that word is also the reason so many people don’t understand what’s wrong with us. It’s a very individual disease, and it’s easy for people to judge.”16
Lucille Ball
Getty Images
Who doesn’t love Lucy? But many may not know that this comedy queen lived with the pain of rheumatoid arthritis from the time she was a teenager. She was 17 when she was diagnosed, as she was trying to start a career as a model. Known for her blazing red hair and slapstick performances, the star of I Love Lucy, the landmark TV show of the 1950s, was one of the original celebrity supporters of the National Arthritis Foundation. Lucille Ball died of heart failure at age 78 in 1989.17
Jennie Garth’s Daughter
Paul Redmond/Getty Images
In 2008, Jennie Garth learned that one of her three daughters, Lola Ray, had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, also known as juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Garth, who starred in the original Beverly Hills, 90210 series and the follow-up, 90210, says it was a difficult time for the family when her then 5-year-old daughter was sick for months. But following treatment, Lola has done much better. In 2016, Garth partnered with the American College of Rheumatology to create a public service announcement to raise awareness during Rheumatic Disease Awareness Month.18
Matt Iseman
Paul Drinkwater/Getty Images
Diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at 32, the American Ninja Warrior host competed for the Arthritis Foundation on The New Celebrity Apprentice.
Since learning he had RA, Iseman has pursued opportunities to help others with the condition. Active in patient communities, he encourages newly diagnosed people to tap the social networkand connect with real people about life with RA.
“Newly diagnosed people have questions, especially about lifestyle,” he explains. “It’s reassuring to talk to someone who knows what you are going through, and can say, here’s what to expect,” he says.
Iseman is upfront about RA in his work life and love life. “I have no problem disclosing my condition in business or romantic relationships,” he states, adding that young people especially, should get the facts and talk openly about rheumatoid arthritis.
“Don’t limit yourself from romantic relationships…You can lead a full life,” he says. “You might not feel your best all the time, you might not perform your best if your back hurts, but RA doesn’t affect the ability to have sex.”
“I have RA but it is not who I am,” he stresses. “It affects only a small part of my life with my girlfriend.”19
Michael Kuluva
Thomas Concordia/Getty Images
Professional figure skater turned fashion designer Michael Kuluva was diagnosed with RA at age 28. Six years later, he partnered with CreakyJoints to raise RA awareness with a runway show for his Tumbler and Tipsy activewear line. The graphic prints and color bursts on the clothing illustrated the joint pain he experienced.
“Fashion can create a conversation,” Kuluva says. “Together, the colors and graphics communicate the hurt to those who don’t know it personally. Invisible pain doesn’t ease when it becomes visible, but it does change something.”
Before working as a designer, Kuluva competed in figure skating and then turned professional to star in ice shows such as Holiday On Ice.
“Celebrities and other high profile people who have a following can really raise awareness within a demographic,” he says. “When more celebrities bring attention to arthritis, we get closer to finding a cure.”20
Danielle Staub
Bobby Bank/Getty Images
The Real Housewives of New Jersey star Danielle Staub revealed at the end of November 2018 that she has been dealing with rheumatoid arthritis. Staub had hidden the diagnosis, but decided to reveal it when she realized that her appearance was changing because of treatments for the disease. “I was blown up and bloated,” Staub told Bravo’s The Daily Dish. “People just assume whatever they want to assume for the reasons [like], Oh I had filler. I had this. I had that. No, I gained 20 pounds last season ‘cause they had put me on a regime of [a steroid called] prednisone and chemotherapy.”
Staub continues to practice yoga and has remained steadfast in her passion for dancing to try to stay healthy and active. ”Don’t let anything or anyone stop you from your passion,” Staub said, hoping to inspire others dealing with RA. “I’ve loved to dance since I was a child, and I will continue to be an arthritis warrior.”
