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It’s no secret that our bodies require a host of different vitamins and minerals to function at their best.
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Most people will wake up with a puffy face occasionally. Often this is caused by fluid buildup, a cold, or a hangover, but it could be a sneaky sign of something else if it sticks around. To come, three possible reasons your morning puffiness won’t budge, plus how to dial down the swelling.
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My healing journey wasn’t quick or simple, but I’m more in tune with my body than ever.
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Former talk show host Wendy Williams is thanking well-wishers for their response to the revelation she has been diagnosed with dementia and ahead of the airing of Lifetime documentary about her struggles.
“I want to say I have immense gratitude for the love and kind words I have received after sharing my diagnosis of Aphasia and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD). Let me say, wow! Your response has been overwhelming,” Williams said in a statement released to The Associated Press through a representative for her care team. “The messages shared with me have touched me, reminding me of the power of unity and the need for compassion.”
Williams’ statement came a day after her team revealed the 59-year-old has been diagnosed with with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia.
It also came hours after a New York judge ruled that Lifetime’s “Where is Wendy Williams?” documentary will air this weekend as scheduled. The order signed by an appellate judge, who was reviewing a petition to block the documentary’s release, says such a ruling would be an “impermissible prior restraint on speech that violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
The ruling clears Lifetime’s two-night broadcast plan for “Where is Wendy Williams?,” which includes footage of the former talk show host and interviews.
An attorney for Williams’ guardian did not immediately return an email seeking comment Friday.
“Lifetime appeared in court today, and the documentary ‘Where is Wendy Williams?’ will air this weekend as planned,” the network said in a statement.
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“I continue to need personal space and peace to thrive,” Williams said in her statement Friday. “Please just know that your positivity and encouragement are deeply appreciated.”
She credited the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration for its support and efforts to educate the public about the disease, which is the same form of dementia Bruce Willis has, after her diagnosis was announced.
Frontotemporal dementia is a rare disease that affects parts of the brain controlling behavior and language. These parts of the brain shrink as the disease gets worse. The disease often includes primary progressive aphasia, which means it’s causing problems with language skills. A person with this type of FTD may have trouble finding words or understanding speech.
Williams’ self-titled daytime talk show ended in 2022 because of her health issues. Sherri Shepherd, who filled in for Williams as a guest host, received her own show.
Williams said in 2018 that she had been diagnosed years before with Graves’ disease, which leads to the overproduction of thyroid hormones and can cause wide-ranging symptoms that can affect overall health. Thursday’s statement from Williams’ care team said Williams’ dementia diagnosis happened in 2023.
People magazine reported in a cover story on Williams this week that some family members say they don’t know where she is and cannot call her themselves, but that she can call them.
The article said the Lifetime documentary crew, which set out in 2022 to chronicle Williams’ comeback, stopped filming in April 2023 when, her manager “and jeweler” Will Selby says in footage for the film, she entered a facility to treat “cognitive issues.” Her son says in the documentary that doctors had connected her cognitive issues to alcohol use, People reported.
Copyright © 2024 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
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Former talk show host Wendy Williams has been diagnosed with dementia and aphasia, she and her medical team said in a statement released Thursday.
Williams has been open in the past about her prolonged health struggles, which included Graves’ disease and a thyroid condition.
The 59-year-old former host of “The Wendy Williams Show” was diagnosed with primary progressive aphasia and frontotemporal dementia in 2023 and those diagnoses have “enabled Wendy to receive the medical care she requires,” according to the press release.
“The decision to share this news was difficult and made after careful consideration,” the statement said, “not only to advocate for understanding and compassion for Wendy, but to raise awareness about aphasia and frontotemporal dementia and support the thousands of others facing similar circumstances.
“Wendy is still able to do many things for herself. Most importantly she maintains her trademark sense of humor and is receiving the care she requires to make sure she is protected and that her needs are addressed. She is appreciative of the many kind thoughts and good wishes being sent her way.”
The National Aphasia Association describes primary progressive aphasia is “a neurological syndrome in which language capabilities become slowly and progressively impaired.”
According to the association, unlike other forms of aphasia, primary progressive aphasia does not result from a stroke or brain injury and instead is caused by the “deterioration of brain tissue important for speech and language.”
Dementia is an umbrella term that describes “the impaired ability to remember, think or make decisions that interferes with doing everyday activities,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Though dementia mostly affects older adults, the CDC notes that it is “not a part of normal aging” and the organization projects that there will be as many as 14 million people with dementia by 2060.
Copyright © 2024 KABC Television, LLC. All rights reserved.
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My healing journey wasn’t quick or simple, but I’m more in tune with my body than ever.
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You’ll likely know whether or not you consumed alcohol the night before, but sometimes sodium-rich foods can sneak up on you. Most often, sodium-rich foods are present in processed snacks or meals, but you’ll occasionally find high amounts of sodium in products like soups, broths, sauces, and even canned or pickled vegetables.
Swelling can also signal dehydration, especially if you’ve consumed loads of salty food or alcohol. “Lack of proper hydration can cause your body to retain water, resulting in puffiness,” Anna Askari, M.D., family physician at One Medical, explains. “This can be exacerbated by alcohol or caffeine consumption, which dehydrate the body.”
So while hydration is important all the time, it will be even more essential when paired with alcohol and higher salt intake.
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Hannah Frye
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Iodine is an essential trace mineral, which means the human body can’t make it on its own and we need to consume enough from our diet and supplementation.
As a critical component of thyroid hormones T4 and T3, this all-important mineral is vital for not only hormone health, but liver, kidney, muscle, blood sugar balance2, and brain function as well. In fact, the thyroid gland is home to 70 to 80% of the body’s iodine1 in a healthy adult.
Iodine via the thyroid gland also helps regulate overall metabolism and is crucial for healthy fetal neurodevelopment during pregnancy.
While iodine may not be as buzzy a mineral as, say, zinc or iron, its health benefits are vast and undeniably important.
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Morgan Chamberlain
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I hadn’t switched doctors in eight years, and he still hadn’t learned how to say my name. In retrospect, I should have been strong enough to correct him, or to leave, or to find another doctor in a city teeming with them. But I barely had enough energy to chew my food.
This guy was a “Best of New York,” someone I had been referred to by my friend, a med student. He had forty years of work under his belt. I only had fifteen years of pain under mine. So I kept going back, first once a year, then once a season, then once a month, to check on the lump in my throat, which was first the size of an almond, then a walnut, and finally, when I was twenty-nine years old, zeroing in on ping-pong ball territory.
“So listen, Frances-sa. I know we said it all looks fine, and it does—it does. All the biopsies we always do have come back clean, and your thyroid level is well within the accepted range. . . .”
I had my thyroid level checked hundreds of times in that eight-year period. Every kind of doctor I went to, from my gastroenterologist to my PCP to my therapist, all ordered thyroid tests. They always came back “normal.” A normal thyroid hormone range is 0.5 to 5.0 mIU/L. Sometimes I was at 1.5, sometimes 4.5, but never too high or too low to be worrisome to doctors.
This, I have since learned, is common for people with thyroid disease. Thyroid levels can change day by day, time of the month, or time of the year. The only way to really know if your thyroid is functioning properly is to take blood often and see how much it fluctuates.
During this time, I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and colitis, two autoimmune diseases (when your body, thinking it is attacking a foreign substance or virus, instead attacks itself). In the case of Crohn’s and colitis, this battle takes place in your intestines. Sometimes the pain is mild and occurs after you eat. Other times it is severe and violent, causing your gut to react by trying to expel the food that upsets it as urgently as possible. Crohn’s and colitis often present with arthritis of the hips and back, and are often married to thyroid malfunction.
So doctors attributed my fatigue and pain to those autoimmune issues, dismissing my assertion there was something terribly off with my thyroid. It wasn’t until it started doubling in size, that my doctor began to take notice.
“So lean back, and I’ll take the biopsy and, well—wow, that nodule has gotten sizable,” I remember my doctor saying.
“Yes, I thought so too,” I started to speak, but a long, thick needle was aimed at my throat and the same doctor, hovering above me, said:
“Shhhhh.”
The next few days were a whirlwind. The biopsy was malignant (in previous biopsies he had found only benign tissue), and he immediately scheduled my surgery. Suddenly, I learned I had cancer, and then in two days, I didn’t. But apparently, I’d had it for eight years. And during those eight years, no one believed me when I said something was wrong. The nodule had grown too fast, where it hurt to swallow and I had difficulty speaking. And then in an instant it was gone. My throat was cut.
I know it was not as simple as that, but I felt silenced in an extreme and brutal way—first by being ignored and then by treating me. And the worst part was, I was right.
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Francesca Louise Grossman
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Vitamin B12 is critical to a number of cognitive functions, such as neurotransmitter production, DNA synthesis1, and maintaining nerve cell health. Sufficient B12 levels are also vital for regulating healthy methylation pathways2 and levels of homocysteine (a biomarker with massive health implications when elevated, including cardiovascular dysfunction and dementia).
When your body isn’t getting enough vitamin B12, it can cause a number of concerning dementia-like symptoms, like confusion, behavior changes, and memory impairment.
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Morgan Chamberlain
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For this research, the study authors point out that AITDs are the most prevalent organ-specific autoimmune disorders. And given that vitamin B12 plays a critical role in proper functioning of the immune system, they wanted to look closer at the correlation between vitamin B12 deficiency and AITD.
In an observational study of 306 people, the participants were divided between those who were and were not deficient in B12, as well as those who had an AITD and those who did not.
Upon the researcher’s analysis of the data, they observed that patients with AITDs had “significantly lower” levels of vitamin B12 compared to those without. Further, those who were deficient in B12 also had significantly higher mean values of anti-TPO.
TPO, or thyroid peroxidase, is an enzyme normally found in the thyroid gland. With TPO antibodies, the body has a harder time keeping the thyroid functioning optimally.
“The vitamin B12 level correlates significantly to AITD,” the study authors conclude, adding, “The concentration of vitamin B12 should therefore be determined in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis as a diagnostic test with high sensitivity and good specificity.”
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Sarah Regan
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