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Christina Applegate has opened up about how she walked 9,000 steps a day without her cane amid her battle with multiple sclerosis (MS).
The 52-year-old actor spoke candidly about her MS symptoms during Tuesday’s episode of her and her pal Jamie-Lynn Sigler’s podcast, MeSsy. Speaking to Sigler, who’s also been diagnosed with MS, Applegate recalled that during a family trip to Europe – specifically to the Netherlands and Paris, France – she actually spent most of the vacation walking.
“I ended up walking. I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “The first couple of days I walked with my cane and then I started to feel like that was actually hindering me a little bit in some weird way.”
The Dead to Me star specified how she made the decision to walk without her cane on the rest of trip, adding: “All of a sudden this, like, strange superpower took over and I just ended up walking without my cane the whole rest of the time and was amazed by it.”
She expressed how shocked she was to be walking during the trip, before revealing how many steps she ultimately did each day while in Europe. “For two years, I haven’t gone maybe over 2,000 steps a day, that’s it,” Applegate added. “And I was looking at my FitBit and it was, like, 9,000 a day.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, MS is “potentially disabling disease of the brain and spinal cord”. In addition to walking difficulties or inability to walk, symptoms can also include numbness or weakness in the limbs, lack of coordination, partial or complete loss of vision, and slurred speech.
During Tuesday’s episode of MeSsy, Applegate acknowledged how the “devastation” of her MS diagnosis previously brought her to a point where she didn’t even “want to try” moving her body.
She also confessed that she was “so afraid” during the trip to Europe because she didn’t want to “over exert” herself with too much physical activity. While she made sure she didn’t overdo it with too much walking, it was still difficult to see her family move faster than her.
“It was hard seeing everyone’s backs,” she said. “Just kind of being the little caboose the whole time, which, you know, is a hard feeling. But then everyone kind of saw that and then would try to stick with me and make me feel like we could walk at my pace too. So, I felt good about it.”
Since publicly announcing her MS diagnosis in 2021, Applegate has continued to speak openly about her symptoms. Her recent comments about walking without a cane came weeks after she described her debilitating pain when standing up. During another episode of her podcast, which aired earlier this month, she confessed that her symptoms had made it difficult for her to shower, noting that she hadn’t done so “in three weeks”.
“Because I can’t stand in my shower. There’s no f***ing way I can use my shower,” she said. “I have such a small bench and my a** is so huge these days that I can’t sit on it, it’s like I slip right off of it. So, I’ve been Cottonelle-ing my body.”
Applegate added that her legs are continuously hurting and that she struggles to get circulation in them. “I don’t know what’s going on, like, no energy. Legs are just done, can’t get circulation. I can’t get them to stop hurting,” she explained.
Although she’d said during the 2 April episode that she was “in relapse,” a representative for Applegate later confirmed to People that the podcast episode was taped “months ago” and that the actor was not currently in a relapse phase.