Tisha Campbell Hints That Divorce “Cured” Her Sarcoidosis, Says She’s Been In Remission
Tisha Campbell’s girl math is quite simple: divorce plus no stress equals a drastic improvement when it comes to her health.
The comedic actress recently appeared on The Mibo Show with Shanti Dias and confessed that finalizing her divorce from Duane Martin in 2020 led to her going into remission from sarcoidosis.
“Everything helped. But I believe… I’m sorry, I have to tell the truth. I have been in remission for four years now. They can’t find it at the base of my brain at all. I haven’t gotten sick not one time,” she explained. “I was so scared to get COVID because I thought, if I get COVID, I’m going to die. Every cold took me to the hospital. Every sniffle. Allergies, it would just build up and I would get sick. But I have not been sick since I got a divorce.”
Realizing how that could be perceived, the 55-year-old quickly backpedaled. “I don’t mean no harm,” she added, laughing. “But when you have any type of disorder or anything like that… stress is a killer. And it’s connected to your body!”
Campbell has been battling the inflammatory disease, which causes growth in the lungs, eyes, and lymph nodes that can lead to eventual organ damage, since 2001. She was diagnosed with Stage 1 sarcoidosis after having her son, Xen, while working on My Wife And Kids.
“[One day] I just could not breathe. It felt like an elephant was on my chest,” she recalled. Initially, the Martin star assumed she had pneumonia, but after seeing “lesions” on her neck and arms, she went to her doctor. After a round of testing and getting a biopsy done of her lungs, she was diagnosed.
Doctors informed her that they couldn’t let it progress. However, the steroids she took to help caused its own set of health problems. “The [steroids] bloat you, they make you very, very sick in other ways, with your insulin and all kinds of stuff. So I was pre-diabetic and it just kept getting worse,” Campbell explained.
When she had her second son, Ezekiel, she found out that her sarcoidosis developed into Stage 2. It caused great concern because comedian Bernie Mac had Stage 4 sarcoidosis and died from complications of pneumonia.
“He had the worst kind. He would be in between scenes getting oxygen, and I just didn’t want to be that,” Campbell admitted. “I knew any type of stress adds on to any disease that you have. I just started working out really hard despite the fact that I could not breathe at all.”
Since finalizing her divorce in 2020, her symptoms have subsided. Campbell and Martin wed in 1996, but she filed for divorce in 2018—claiming she endured physical, mental, and emotional abuse throughout their marriage.
“I’m so proud of where I am in my mental health and my physical health now,” she noted on the podcast. “I understood that they’re a combination. If you have any type of disorder, it’s important to understand that you’ve got to do everything.”
Watch the full episode of Campbell on The Mibo Show above.
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