Questionable diagnosis on non-specific symptoms
Doctors are diagnosing old-fashioned diseases again
Emily Blackwood
While gracing the covers of Vogue and Elle and working with major brands like Dior and Versace, the supermodel has struggled with Lyme disease. The tick-borne illness causes her severe joint pain, anxiety, brain fog, extreme tiredness and other symptoms that her mother, former The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Hadid, told PEOPLE can "bring you to your knees."
Not that I'm unsympathetic, but these sound like perfectly normal symptoms of a stressful supermodeling career.
If people are out riding horses and getting exercise outdoors to stay fit, and end up being bitten by ticks, mites, chiggers, mosquitos, they are living a healthy lifestyle, and I have to call it the human condition.
Life is not without its share of suffering, aches and pains. It's going to hurt no matter what to work out that much, but the alternatives are not really any better. Social anxiety, brain fog and tiredness are all completely normal for anyone with a demanding career and so many commitments.
We're just not seeing a specific microorganism in many cases identified at the doctor's office that would not be present in those who do not have the disease, and highly specialized treatments for vague symptoms are usually not warranted.
The common case of the "crazy cat lady" with an archaic off-beat diagnosis of "schizophrenia" rumored to be caused by "toxoplasmosis" from cat feces also comes to mind. People who curry horses and clean out litter boxes are not getting as sick by themselves as the doctors make them.