Brian Austin Green was bedridden for months with stroke-like symptoms: 'I couldn't speak'
Brian Austin Green is opening up about his debilitating past health struggles.
Speaking to Cheryl Burke in Monday's new episode of her podcast, "Sex, Lies and Spray Tans," the "Beverly Hills, 90210" actor — who's competing in the competition show Fox's "Special Forces: World's Toughest Test" — detailed mysterious health issues that caused severe brain fog and temporarily robbed him of basic language skills.
"I'd spent four and a half years recovering from stroke-like symptoms without ever having had a stroke," Green told Burke.
Doctors diagnosed him with a combination of vertigo and ulcerative colitis, he said, and he was bedridden for three months.
"Then these neurological things started happening after the vertigo," Green said. "I got to the point where I shuffled like I was a 90-year-old man. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t read. I couldn’t write."
Brian Austin Green had to remove gluten, dairy from his diet
He sought out a new specialist, who confirmed his issues were dietary. Stress, combined with "internal inflammation from gluten and dairy," compounded his symptoms.
"It was all undiagnosed by Western medicine, so I ended up having to finally find a doctor that is much more into, like, kinesiology and Eastern medicine," said Green, who has competed on recent seasons of "The Masked Singer" and "Dancing with the Stars."
Green, 50, and his fiancé, ballroom dancer Sharna Burgess, previously spoke about his battle with ulcerative colitis in an interview with "Good Morning America" last year. Green revealed he lost 20 pounds because of the inflammatory bowel disease, which causes irritation and open sores in the digestive tract, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
"I try and avoid gluten and dairy as much as possible," Green said. "It's really just dietary, like, as long as I can keep things within my system that my body doesn't think I'm poisoning it with, then it doesn't fight back.
"I would eat food, and literally it was like, my body didn't process any of that," he continued. "So then, when you start playing catch up with, like, staying on top of being hydrated enough, that's such a battle."
Son Kassius Marcil-Green being gay 'was unknown for me'
Last month, Burgess revealed on her and Green's "Old-ish" podcast that his vertigo made it difficult to spend time with Kassius Marcil-Green, the son he shares with "90210" costar Vanessa Marcil. Green further opened up about fatherhood while speaking with NSYNC's Lance Bass on the "Frosted Tips with Lance Bass" podcast's Oct. 1 episode.
"Your 21-year-old (son) is out and gay and proud, and he was so lucky to be able to be in your family because so many kids out there don't get that," Bass said.
"It's been a challenge because, honestly, my son being gay, it was unknown for me. I think a lot of people are afraid of the unknown whereas I'm not," Green told Bass. "I would get into these conversations with Kass where it was like I really wanted to understand the things that seemed so different to me at first. And then you realize, 'Oh, this isn't different at all.'"
Green continued, "It's just your choice of partner. It doesn't affect me at all. And that's the thing I'm always trying to beat into people now; it's like, it does not affect you. Why do you care so much? And why are you trying to somehow bully your feelings and your opinion into something that literally does not affect you at all?"
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brian Austin Green talks yearslong battle with 'stroke-like symptoms'
