Hannah Brown is opening up about the ongoing health battles that fans didn’t know about as she took home the top prize on Special Forces.
“I will say that experience was huge for me, because behind-the-scenes, I’ve really been struggling with a lot of health issues before that almost made me not want to go on [Special Forces],” Brown, 30, said on the Tuesday, May 6, episode of the “Heal Squad” podcast. “I was just feeling really bad in every sense of the word and I had really questioned my strength, like how strong I could be physically and mentally, and questioned my worth and if I was enough.”
With each day Brown stayed on Special Forces, she was reminded of her strength — and her worth. “Definitely helped me take another big step forward in my healing journey,” she said.
Brown noted that everything she had done “caught up” with her after the COVID-19 pandemic, explaining that the shows she was cast on were “emotionally taxing” — and she felt like “everything just started to manifest physically.”
Scroll down to see Brown’s most candid quotes:
Hannah Brown may have opened up her life to the public eye on reality TV, but she’s also been suffering from her own private health battles. “I still haven’t quite gotten to this because I’m not at a place where I’m ready to have children and I didn’t want to have another thing to add […]
Struggling to Walk Up Stairs
Brown explained that her body was “so inflamed,” and walking became a struggle.
“I had this one moment where I couldn’t even lift my legs to walk up the stairs to my apartment, and I had to call my — well, it ended up my neighbor opened her door — and I was like, ‘I can’t get up the stairs.’ I am young, I am able bodied and like, something just started to shift,” Brown explained, noting that she went to the emergency room. “And they were like, this is like, ‘You’re OK. This is just anxiety.’ I’m like, ‘Well, I have no color in my legs. They’re actually purple.’”
After going to the doctor and getting “tested for everything,” Brown focused on her mental health and was diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome.
“I have really high histamine levels,” she explained. “So I think people can fully go on that, and I haven’t been as extreme with changing everything, but just knowing that there’s certain foods that are going to trigger me that have higher histamine levels, and I was eating them every day.”
Suffering from ‘Severe’ PCOS
Brown was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and was told it was “no big deal” and advised to take Metformin, which is used to treat high blood sugar levels.
“Because a lot of what PCOS is is insulin resistance, you kind of can treat it the same way that you would a diabetic,” Brown said. “And so I did that, but I wasn’t given really much support on it, and I just like, ‘OK, I guess this is not a big deal, because he didn’t act like it was really a big deal.’ And my symptoms just got worse and worse.”
Brown explained that she had “super irregular periods” and struggled with “acne and weight gain.” When she had an ultrasound, Brown said she was told she suffered from “severe” PCOS.
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Didn’t Work Out for 1 Year
Brown explained that her body “hurt so bad” that she opted not to workout for a year, while going to physical therapy multiple times a week. While on her “rebuilding journey,” Brown received a call from Special Forces.
“I just got back into the gym, like maybe a month or two, working with a strength training coach, and I was still trying to build back up my confidence of like, ‘OK, I can do things and not get hurt.’ Because I’m just getting hurt all the time when you’re so inflamed, like it was just hard,” she said. “I can remember getting [the call] and feeling like, ‘Oh no, like, I’m not going to be able to do this.’ Like, physically, I’m just getting to the point I can, like, you know, do weights feel comfortable, somewhat comfortable in the gym, and I still just, like, took the leap of faith, and it pushed me.”
Brown noted that she began to feel “really weak,” but Special Forces made her feel surprised by “how strong” she is. “It was really powerful, but it was a weird timing of it all, but very necessary. And so I’m so thankful that it kind of pushed me in a way that like I was scared to push myself,” she said.
After the experience, Brown shared that she had a “hard time” coming back from the show.
“Like, why did that feel more comfortable than my life?” she said. “That’s when I started to have a little bit of a freakout, like, ‘Oh we’ve got some work to do here.’ … A lot of people, I feel like, are like, ‘It was great, but it was traumatic.’ I did not feel that. It made me realize there are things I need to work on when I get back home and I am stronger than I think I am.”
Brown noted that she’s “so glad” she went on the show because it helped her “get over” feeling “helpless” and thinking her body “doesn’t work,” adding, “It did pull through for me when I needed it to.”
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Calls Double Uterus Diagnosis A ‘Shock’
Brown revealed that she had been diagnosed with a double uterus, but has yet to undergo “exploratory surgery” to find out more.
“There’s some risk in whatever may be there when I’m ready to have children. It looks like they’re attached in some way, it’s just, like, almost split,” Brown said. “She’s going to have to figure out, ‘Is one bigger than the other? Can it, like, hold a baby? Which one is better?’ It’s a whole thing. There’s been so much going on. I was like, ‘I need to put that on a shelf. I don’t need to be stressing about that right now.’”
Brown was told by her doctor to start having things “planned out,” including freeing her eggs, by age 30.
“I’m like, ‘OK, I’m getting married this year. I will get right on that right after,’” she said, referring to her upcoming nuptials with Adam Woolard. “It can definitely complicate things because can the size of the uterus hold a baby? Is one better than the other? But there have been cases of people having double uteruses and having babies and being perfectly fine. But it was definitely a shock.”
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