Christina Applegate says doctors misdiagnosed her with multiple sclerosis

Very emotional moment for her on her podcast. It's called Messy. This is one that she co-hosts with Jamie Lynn Sigler, an actress who was also diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. And she describes the moment when she was told she actually did not have MS. It's hard to say that she came into my room and she said, congratulations, you don't have MS. This may come as great news, but to me it comes as like I'm back at square one. So she was diagnosed in 2021. Since then, she's become an advocate for MS. She says she first felt numbness in her feet that traveled up her legs. She was experiencing a lot of pain. And she says she tests everything under the sun, MRIs, a spinal tap, and now she's left wondering what all of this is. Back to the beginning. All of those tests, but as people who have someone in their lives with multiple sclerosis, no, there's not a yes-no kind of test, unfortunately. Yeah, it's looking at the symptoms, which can be really hard to diagnose. There is an MRI for your brain, an MRI for your spine, also a spinal tap. It's a process of elimination, one that can be really difficult for the patient because when you look at the symptoms of MS, which is an autoimmune disease, it includes things like numbness, fatigue, even impacts on your memory and even your mobility. Because of that complexity, certain studies suggest that 10, even up to 20% of people who have this diagnosis, when they go to a specialized center, are told, you know, we actually don't think you have MS. It's also evolving. We've had new guidelines for the diagnosis of MS as of last year that put an emphasis on a different finding on MRI, one that she apparently didn't have. So this just tells you that it's not just a diagnosis that is complex in itself, but it's one that's evolving over time as we learn more. More than 3 million people around the world have been diagnosed with MS. Canada actually has the highest rate of diagnosis. Majority of those diagnosed are actually women.