"Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” the 'Three Women' star shared of her symptoms on the 'SHE MD' podcast
Shailene Woodley is opening up about a mystery health issue she experienced while working on the Divergent film franchise.
Appearing on the Tuesday, Sept. 24 episode of the SHE MD podcast with Mary Alice Haney and Dr. Thais Aliabadi, the actress, 32, recalled how she was plagued with debilitating physical symptoms during her early 20s.
“I was losing my hearing. I couldn't walk for longer than five minutes at a time without having to lay down for hours and hours and hours and sleep. Everything I ate hurt my stomach,” the Three Women star said, adding to the hosts that she wasn’t going to disclose what caused her symptoms because it “feels like a personal thing.”
"I've always eaten very healthy and I'm very athletic. And so, it was a confusing process for me to go, ‘Well, what am I doing wrong? Why am I passing out every month when I get my period? Why am I hypothyroid? Why am I all of these things?’ And one doctor being like, ‘It's probably endometriosis.’ And another doctor going, ‘It's probably this.’ And another one going, ‘It's probably that.’ ‘You have a tilted uterus. You have a heart-shaped uterus.’ Every person I went to was giving me mixed information, and it set me on my own journey,” she continued.
The Big Little Lies star went on to share that she went on a “long journey” to feel well again, adding it took “about a decade of unwinding and healing and getting healthy.”
Admitting she took her health “into my own hands,” Woodley said she devoted her time to educating herself and “approaching it from an internal holistic place” and the health issue “ultimately physically resolved itself.”
“And now … I'm not on thyroid medication anymore. I'm not on any medication anymore. My hormones are so balanced. Everything is pumping in the way that it should.” she continued, adding that she is “very healthy now.”
However, there were also mental symptoms that came with her physical ones. “A lot of other things came from feeling so much discomfort physically,” she said. “I'm now suddenly afraid of food. And then body dysmorphia and confusion about identity and feeling safe in my own skin.”
“It forced me to really take a deep look and become introspective,” she explained. “That was, I guess, the path for me, alongside the physical healing, was acknowledging the mental side of the healing process for myself, which involved looking at real traumas and real PTSD that I had experienced at various times in my life, without going into detail about what they were.”
Based on the popular book series by author Veronica Roth, the first Divergent movie was released in 2014 and was followed by 2015’s Insurgent and 2016’s Allegiant.
Woodley starred alongside the likes of Theo James, Kate Winslet, Zoë Kravitz and Miles Teller as a young girl living in a future dystopian Chicago in which society was divided into five factions: Abnegation, Amity, Candor, Dauntless, and Erudite.
A fourth and final film, titled Ascendant, was meant to conclude the franchise, though it never came to fruition due to Allegiant’s lackluster box office performance.
Woodley previously discussed her health concern during a 2021 interview with The Hollywood Reporter and revealed that the condition forced her to turn down roles because because she "physically couldn't participate in them."
Woodley currently stars alongside Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise and Gabrielle Creevy in Three Women on Starz. New episodes premiere every Friday on Starz.
The Quran - Chapter Al - Jin: 23
˹My duty is˺ only to convey ˹the truth˺ from Allah and ˹deliver˺ His messages.” And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger will certainly be in the Fire of Hell, to stay there for ever and ever.
