What To Know
- Jennifer Esposito endured undiagnosed health issues early in her career, including tooth loss, depression, and suicidal thoughts.
- After years of misdiagnosis, Esposito was finally diagnosed with celiac disease and told her liver was failing.
- Esposito credits the celiac diagnosis with saving her life after years of suffering.
Jennifer Esposito has opened up about her health battles during her early career as a young actress in New York City, and how the situation got so bad that her tooth fell out while filming a TV show.
The actress, who played Chief of Police Jackie Curatola on Blue Bloods, spoke about her health history with Maria Menounos on the latest episode of the Heal Squad podcast. During the conversation, Esposito admitted to becoming “deeply depressed” and having “thoughts of suicide” after doctors struggled to identify her health issues.
“They brought me to a psychologist, like they had me on every medication,” she said, per PageSix. “They wanted to give me shock treatment at one point because I wasn’t responding. I’m very sensitive to medication. It was a really bad time. And my mother had people pray over me.”
The NCIS alum said she started to suspect her physical and mental health symptoms were connected to her nutrition, but still couldn’t pinpoint the exact cause. Her health continued to deteriorate and became especially bad while working on the ABC comedy Samantha Who?, which aired from 2007 to 2009.
“I had hair falling out, nails falling off… a tooth fell out of my mouth, like, literally in the middle of a scene,” she recalled. “I was mortified but also had been so ill that I just… I went hysterical. Like, somebody has to help me.”
After being misdiagnosed several times, a therapist suggested that Esposito’s symptoms were caused by stress. “Talk about gaslighting,” Esposito stated. “We don’t ever treat the actual underlying issue. We treat symptoms in this country, in America. I went for years on that, and I tried everything myself. I went to holistic healers. I went to get my aura cleansed. I was vegan.”
The Boys star recalled one drive where she was at her wits’ end. “I remember saying to myself, because I was so depressed of being so sick all the time and fighting panic disorders… ‘If you don’t get a diagnosis, you have to accept the fact that you’re crazy, and you’ve created this, and you’re going to let it go because I can’t keep doing this.’”
CBS
Moments later, a large piece of wood fell from a truck in front of her and smashed through her windshield. After pulling to the side of the road, Esposito said she collected herself and took the incident as a sign to continue searching for answers.
She finally got those answers two days later when a doctor called to tell her she’d been diagnosed with celiac disease. Esposito remembered the doctor telling her, “I’m not sure how you’re alive,” noting that the case was so severe that her liver was failing.
Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition where the immune system reacts to gluten (found in foods containing wheat, barley, or rye), sometimes causing damage to the small intestine, according to the Mayo Clinic. The intestinal damage can lead to symptoms such as diarrhea, fatigue, weight loss, bloating, or anemia.
Esposito said she immediately removed gluten from her diet, but it still took a long time for her body to recover fully. “They had me on four Klonopin a day, and I was still a trembling mess,” she shared. “I was literally sleeping in my kitchen because it was the only place that didn’t have a window, because the light would make me tremble and shake.”
She also revealed she was admitted to a psychiatric ward after telling one of her doctors to keep her in the hospital “because I’m jumping out of my skin… I’m going to jump out the window,” which was taken as a threat of self-harm.
Eventually, Esposito recovered, telling Menounos that her celiac disease diagnosis “saved her life.”