Glenn Beck revealed he has been suffering from a series of serious health problems over the last five years. The conservative talk show host made his admission on his network, The Blaze, on November 10.
Beck told viewers he experienced strange problems with his eyesight, along with temporary paralysis of his vocal cords.
"We didn't know at the time what was causing me to feel as though, out of nowhere, my hands, or feet or arms and legs would feel as if someone had just crushed them, or set them on fire, or pushed broken glass into my feet. I can't tell you how many nights my wife would sit in the light looking at the bottom of my feet to make sure there really wasn't any glass in them," Beck said.
The 50-year-old political commentator told the audience he tried several changes to his diet, along with other methods of controlling his symptoms, to no avail. Finally, he visited a treatment center where he said health care workers "do crazy stuff."
Doctors at the Carrick Brain Centers in Irving, Texas, diagnosed the patient with adrenal fatigue, an auto-immune disorder, and other irregularities with his body. He told viewers he has consulted with some of the best doctors in the world, who he said were unable to diagnose what could be causing his symptoms. Beck said he kept his health problems secret from the public for numerous reasons, both personal and professional.
"I have never lied to you, but I have omitted a few really important facts because - they scared me. I didn't have any answers, and the answers I was being given at the time meant ... the end of our time together," Beck told viewers on his network, as his eyes began to water.
The talk show host admitted his hands would shake regularly, and while he was on the Fox network, he developed a series of signals with his executive producer, signaling when cameras should be moved away from him, so viewers would not witness his involuntary behavior.
Symptoms of his illnesses also included an inability to remember the faces or names of people he met, or the conversations in which he took part. After symptoms began to take hold, Beck began to suffer from what he terms a "time collapse," making him unable to remember when he had conversations, sometimes being years off in his memory. Doctors believe he had not experienced REM sleep in as much as a decade, making dreams rare and fleeting, and possibly contributing to his general feeling of confusion.
