How Sasha Pieterse Navigated Epilepsy Diagnosis, Weight Gain at 17
Pretty Little Liars alum Sasha Pieterse detailed her decade-long journey to receiving a PCOS diagnosis while simultaneously suffering from epilepsy and playing the “it girl” on the ABC hit series.
When it comes to her health journey, Sasha Pieterse isn’t keeping any secrets.
Because while the Pretty Little Liars alum spent her teenage years playing “it girl” Alison DiLaurentis on the ABC mystery drama, she was simultaneously experiencing a myriad of difficult symptoms behind-the-scenes.
“I really started struggling with something, I didn’t know what it was,” Sasha told cohosts Dr. Thaïs Aliabadi and Mary Alice Haney in E! News’ exclusive clip from the SHE MD podcast’s Aug. 19 episode. “I had also just been diagnosed with epilepsy, which nobody knew until very recently. So I was dealing with seizures with no cause—no idea what the cause was—and I started gaining weight.”
While the 29-year-old has had irregular periods since she was 10 years old, she always assumed it would regulate with time. However, it never did.
“I started Pretty Little Liars when I was 12,” she notes on the podcast, which goes live Tuesday mornings. “By 17, I had gained 70 pounds and was silently battling seizures, irregular periods, acne, and hair loss, while playing an 'it girl' on TV.”
So, she sought out various doctors to try and get to the bottom of her symptoms.
“I went to 17 different gynecologists,” she adds. “They all said I was just eating too much or not exercising enough, even though I was doing everything right. If I ate more salads, I would’ve turned green.”
Despite multiple doctors blaming her weight gain on lifestyle choices, Sasha—who shares son Hendrix Wade Shaeffer, 4, with husband Hudson Sheaffer—was ultimately diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome(PCOS).
“Once I got the diagnosis, not only was that so validating—I’m not crazy, there is actually something that’s going on with me—now I have a label,” she shares. “Now I know that there are steps I can take to try and regulate it and move forward.”
And after sharing her story, the Image of You actress quickly came to the realization that she wasn’t the only woman suffering the symptoms of PCOS in silence.
“It’s definitely a silent epidemic,” she notes. “And the more you talk about it, the more of a community you build. And you realize you are not alone, which is so important.”
After all, spending nearly a decade trying to find answers to her mysterious symptoms took quite a toll on her mental health—especially while she was trying to navigate her teenage years in the public eye.
“I tried not eating,” she admits. “I would go through waves of depression. I had body dysmorphia and disordered eating, but it wasn’t changing what I looked like. If anything, it was getting worse.”
“I got told I was crazy or that I was doing something wrong so many times,” she adds. “But I kept advocating for myself and that’s how I finally got an answer.”
Source: https://www.eonline.com/news/1421311/sasha-pieterse-details-pcos-epilepsy-diagnosis