Carrie Ann Inaba Says She’s ‘Healing’ in Surprise Statement Amid Autoimmune Illness

Dancing With the Stars judge Carrie Ann Inaba is reportedly suffering from severe pain due to her autoimmune issues, as Hello! Magazine reported. According to the publication, Inaba took to her Instagram Story to open up about her illness. She also told her fans that she’ll be staying off of social media as she navigates her health battle.

Inaba has been missing from The Talk for some time now as she deals with severe symptoms stemming from her autoimmune conditions. She reportedly took a step back from the talk show in mid-March before the show took a hiatus in the midst of the Sharon Osbourne controversy. She has since shared updates about how she’s been doing on social media. Inaba told her fans on her Instagram Story on Saturday, “On a growth break. Be back soon. Healing in motion.” The DWTS judge also thanked her fans for the “sweetest messages” that they’ve been sending her as she attempts to recover.

Inaba did admit that it’s “been a rough few weeks,” but that she is currently in a place where she can at least “function.” She continued, “All I want and desire is healing.” Her update comes about a month after she opened up about some of the extreme symptoms that she’s been battling. In March, she explained that she was taking a step back from The Talk as both of her arms had gone numb and that she was experiencing “sharp shooting pains.” The TV personality also said that her “spinal stenosis was acting up because of inflammation,” and that she was in the midst of a “fibromyalgia flare.” Inaba has been open about her autoimmune issues, as she has spoken about them at length on The Talk.

In May 2019, Inaba told her co-anchors and The Talk‘s viewers that she suffers from “all of these autoimmune conditions” including fibromyalgia, according to Women’s Health. “I feel so much shame when I go through these things, because I want to be what people see. And people see a healthy person, from the outside,” she explained. “I look healthy—and I am really healthy, all things considered—but then I have these incredible sharp pains like today [the hairstylist] was doing my hair and he barely touched me but I thought he burnt me with a curling iron because my body is in a fibromyalgia flare.”