Jenna Jameson Shares Health Update After Being Given a Year to Live
Jenna Jameson credits her recovery to diet, cognitive therapy and wife Jessi Lawless.
Jenna Jameson decided to take her health into her own hands after spending nine months in the hospital. The former adult film star, 49, shared in a new interview with Entertainment Tonight an update on her health after being diagnosed with "a multitude of things" and being told at one point that she only had one year to live.
Jameson said her health issues began "very suddenly" when she began collapsing and eventually lost her ability to walk. During her hospital stay, Jameson said doctors "could not put their finger on what it was" and ended up diagnosing her with everything from Guillain-Barré syndrome to blood cancer. "When I was first told that I didn't have very long to live, I think I just balled up," she remembered. "I didn't really know how to digest that."
But Jameson refused to accept her prognosis and said, "I'm not going to let this happen. I refuse. I'm not going to go down like that." After nine months of not "seeing any progression" or "feeling better," Jameson admitted she felt "terrible" and decided to "take [her] health into [her] own hands," at which point she put herself in a wheelchair and wheeled herself out of the hospital.
"I ended up just taking everything into my own hands and making it happen," she shared. "I knew that I still had so much life left to live. ... I just decided, good or bad, I'm getting out of here and I'm going to go at it holistically." Since then, Jameson has regained her ability to walk and has improved her memory function with the help of a cognitive therapist and a change in her diet.
"I feel myself coming back to life when I eat correctly, keto-wise. I feel energetic. Intermittent fasting, for me, what it does is it kind of resets my metabolism," she said. "Coming out of the hospital and being on so many medications that they had me on, once I started intermittent fasting... I felt my all of my nerve endings starting to fire up again. ...I finally feel like sunshine again." Jameson might not only be at "about 75%" now, but she's "feeling really good" and training every other day. "I also have a great partner," she said of Jessi Lawless, whom she married in May. "I am married and I'm just really happy."