Glenn Beck reveals medical condition he says made him 'look crazy' for last 5 years

Glenn Beck reveals medical condition he says made him 'look crazy' for last 5 years
(Image credit: BlazeTV)

Glenn Beck has a confession. On his BlazeTV show Monday evening, Beck told his faithful viewers — "tonight's show is not for the casual fan or, really, anyone in the press" — that he has been suffering from debilitating health problems for the past five years. Starting in about August 2010, Beck said, "I had begun to have a string of health issues that, quite honestly, has made me look crazy. And quite honestly, I have have felt crazy because of them."

The health problems included shooting pain in his hands and feet, an inability (and lack of need) to sleep, memory loss, and eventually seizures. "Doctors tell me that up until recently, I hadn’t had a real REM sleep in maybe as long as a decade," he said. Doctors in New York gave him a test for people with traumatic brain injury and found that his brain was operating in the bottom 10th percentile. Doctors told him to take a year off; instead, he threw himself into building his own media empire in Dallas, where the weather was supposed to be better for him.

"I asked God: 'Am I done? Can I put my sword down now?'" Beck said on Monday. "The answer was always 'No.'" Then, he said, he found a brain clinic that diagnosed several related problems and helped him on the road to recovery. "After months of treatment and completely changing the way I eat, sleep, work, and live, along with ongoing hormone treatment and intensive physical therapy, I have reversed the process," he said. You can watch Part 1 of Beck's monologue below, and Part 2 here. --Peter Weber

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Peter Weber

Peter Weber is a senior editor at TheWeek.com, and has handled the editorial night shift since the website launched in 2008. A graduate of Northwestern University, Peter has worked at Facts on File and The New York Times Magazine. He speaks Spanish and Italian and plays bass and rhythm cello in an Austin rock band. Follow him on Twitter.