America’s Got Talent host Howie Mandel had a health scare earlier this week when he passed out at a California Starbucks on Wednesday. Mandel was briefly hospitalized, citing low blood sugar and dehydration as the reason for his incident. Mandel went into greater detail on Thursday in a YouTube video for his podcast Howie Mandel Does Stuff with his daughter, Jackelyn Shultz, explaining that the reason for his dehydration was a colonoscopy he underwent a few days earlier. “What has this world come to where you can’t pass out in a Starbucks privately anymore?” Mandel joked.
“I had a colonoscopy a few days ago,” Mandel joked. “They empty you out. You take a drink and you empty out. I have consensual diarrhea for an entire night… And then I was dehydrated.” The 65-year-old explained that his mistake was going back to work immediately after the procedure. “All I kind of lived on was coffee and caffeine, which also exacerbates dehydration, I was told,” he said.
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Mandel also claimed that he doesn’t drink water, although he promised to “moisturize and hydrate from now on” after his fainting spell. “Apparently, when you do that you will pass out at Starbucks… It was also the cost of the caramel macchiato venti that just threw me over the edge,” Mandel told Schultz. Schulz explained that she was “nervous” after hearing he was headed to the hospital. “I saw TMZ,” she said. “Well, first Mom called me and she goes, ‘Don’t worry. Everything’s OK.’ I was worried. She’s like, ‘We’re going to the hospital.’ So, I was already freaking out.”
Ultimately, Mandel assured Schultz and their viewers that the whole ordeal wasn’t nearly as serious as it initially sounded. “I just passed out and… I got really dizzy and couldn’t stand up, but I don’t think I ever lost consciousness,” he said. “And I got totally soaked with sweat. For somebody who is dehydrated, I had a lot of sweat in me, so that even exacerbated the dehydration.” After getting his heart checked out at the hospital, he was good to go. “I want to thank first responders, and everybody at the hospital, at West Hills Hospital, thank you so much for taking care of me,” Mandel concluded. “Here I am, back on my podcast, healthy, hydrated and moist.”
