On Monday, libertarian media mogul Glenn Beck revealed to fans that he has been dealing with a mounting number of health issues and says that not long ago he reached a life changing “pivot-point” in his career.
Often nearing tears, Beck made his announcement during his Monday evening Blaze TV show, telling fans that he didn’t want to keep them from knowing about the full extent of issues with which he had been dealing since he left Fox News in 2011.
“Tonight’s show is not for the casual fan or, really, anyone in the press,” Beck said Monday. “This is a one-on-one between friends. No one in the media ever does a show like this, because it is crazy… But I believe that by not talking with you openly, it destroys everything of real meaning and value–namely, our trust.
The talk radio and TV host said that his health began to deteriorate around the time of his monumentally successful Restoring Honor rally in Washington, DC. Issues included trouble with his eyesight, sleep loss, headaches, and vocal chord problems. At first, doctors thought it might be some kind of neuropathy.
Beck noted that his health problems began when he was still doing his Fox TV show.
“We didn’t know at the time what was causing me to feel as though, out of nowhere, my hands and feet, or arms and legs would feel like someone had just crushed them, set them on fire or pushed broken glass into them,” he said.
His problems worsened until he was having seizure-like attacks.
“Most afternoons my hands would start to shake, or my hands and feet began to curl and eventually–if I didn’t stop and rest, I began to curl into a fetal position. This has baffled some of the best doctors in the world. It has frightened me and my family, and I didn’t know what was happening,” Beck told fans.
Doctors told Beck that he had only five to ten years before he would become non-functional, he said. Beck said that it all seriously hampered his ability to work both at Fox and later at Blaze TV, and staffers began to notice. At some point, Beck said he reached a “pivot-point” where he realized that soon he would not be able to function at all and began to make provisions for others to step in and take over for him in his media empire.
But ultimately, after years of searching for what was going wrong with him, doctors diagnosed Beck with an autoimmune disorder and adrenal fatigue. The results of a traumatic brain injury test showed he was only functioning in the bottom tenth percentile.
But now, after months of therapy, the talk radio star is well on the road to recovery, and a recent brain test showed he is again functioning in the 90th percentile.
“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. Some of the physical scars will be with me for the rest of my life… but my brain is back online in a big way,” Beck assured listeners.
“Rush Limbaugh says he does the show with half his brain tied behind his back,” Beck quipped. “With me, it’s actually been true. But now, it’s back online.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
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