Amy Schumer reveals she has Cushing’s syndrome
Actor and comedian
Amy Schumer said she was diagnosed with Cushing’s syndrome, a relatively rare hormonal disorder that can change a person’s facial appearance and cause weight gain.
Schumer’s revelation came after she came under widespread scrutiny of her appearance recently, with people noting online that her face looked “puffier” during a recent interview on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”
The newsletter “News Not Noise” published an interview in which the 42-year-old revealed the Cushing’s diagnosis. Schumer posted the interview on her Instagram account; her representatives were not immediately available for comment.
In the interview, Schumer said the clamor of public comments about changes in her facial appearance made her realize “something was wrong.” Here’s what to know about the disorder.
Sometimes called hypercortisolism, Cushing’s syndrome is a “fairly rare” hormonal disorder, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine. The disorder occurs when the body produces too much cortisol over a long period of time, or it can be triggered by steroid medications.
Cortisol helps maintain blood pressure, regulate blood sugar, reduce inflammation and turn consumed food into energy, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health. But in excessive quantities, it can wear on the body over time.
Cushing’s syndrome mainly affects adults aged 30 to 50, according to
NIH. The syndrome impacts roughly three times as many women as men, though it can also occur in children.
A common cause of Cushing’s syndrome is too high a dose of glucocorticoids – a type of medicine that imitates the role of cortisol in the body and is used to treat common conditions including asthma and rheumatoid arthritis – over time, NIH says.
Cushing’s syndrome can also be caused by a tumor on the pituitary gland, which is located at the base of the brain. A tumor can disrupt the pituitary gland’s normal production of hormones and cause it to make too much of one type of hormone, called adrenocorticotropic hormone, or ACTH. This, in turn, causes the adrenal glands to make too much cortisol, which can lead to Cushing’s.
The disorder can also be caused by a tumor on one adrenal gland, or in rare cases, on both adrenal glands. According to NIH, “adrenal tumors are most often benign but sometimes are cancerous.”
The newsletter reported that Schumer attributed her illness to receiving steroid injections in high doses. It was not immediately clear why she was taking steroids, but she has discussed having a range of health conditions in the past, including endometriosis.
Symptoms of the disorder vary from person to person, but according to Johns Hopkins Medicine, the most common signs and symptoms are: severe tiredness, muscle weakness, round face, upper body obesity, high blood pressure, fragile skin that is slow to heal, increased fat around the neck and high blood sugar.
If left untreated, Cushing’s syndrome can sometimes be fatal, according to NIH.
The disorder has also been linked to irritability and anxiety or depression, and reddish-blue stretch marks on different parts of the body.
The key to treating Cushing’s syndrome is to “lower the excess level of steroids” in the body, Ashley Grossman, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Oxford, said in a phone interview.
A doctor treating someone with Cushing’s will first try to identify what is causing the person’s body to produce excess cortisol, Grossman said. If the disorder is caused by the glucocorticoids they take to treat another condition, a doctor will work with them to either reduce the dosage or change the treatment.
If the person has a tumor in the adrenal or pituitary glands, they probably have to have it removed. With advances in modern medicine, surgeons can remove most tumors on the pituitary gland through a person’s nose.
A patient with an adrenal tumor may also need surgery to remove the affected gland. If both adrenal glands are removed, the body no longer produces enough cortisol and other hormones, so patients have to take a treatment for life, according to NIH.
Once the body’s cortisol levels return to normal, the body typically fixes itself naturally, Grossman said.
Most people, he said,
“do get very, very much better, and physically, they return pretty well to normal.”
But the condition can in some cases also lead to changes in someone’s mental state – causing depression or anxiety, for example – that are slower and more difficult to treat, he added.
Occasionally when someone has been exposed to very high levels of steroids over long periods of time, even after treatment for Cushing’s, their pituitary gland may not function properly. In those cases, “paradoxically,” they may then need to be treated with small doses of steroids, Grossman said.
Schumer told “News Not Noise” author Jessica Yellin that she underwent extensive medical testing while on a press tour to promote her show “Life & Beth” and that it had been a “crazy” couple of weeks.
“While I was doing press on camera for my Hulu show, I was also in MRI machines four hours at a time, having my veins shut down from the amount of blood drawn and thinking I may not be around to see my son grow up,” she said.
Finding out that the form of Cushing’s she has “will just work itself out … was the greatest news imaginable,” Schumer said.
Before she revealed her Cushing’s diagnosis, Schumer posted on Instagram that she was facing “some medical and hormonal” challenges, and called out those who focused on her appearance at the expense of the work she put into her new show.
“Thank you so much for everyone’s input about my face! I’ve enjoyed feedback and deliberation about my appearance as all women do for almost 20 years,” she said.
She acknowledged that her face was “puffier than normal right now,” but added: “I also believe a woman doesn’t need any excuse for her physical appearance and owes no explanation.”
Schumer has been transparent about her health struggles and those of her loved ones. In 2019, she revealed in her Netflix special, “Amy Schumer: Growing,” that her husband, Chris Fischer, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. In 2020, she opened up about the physical challenges associated with in vitro fertilization.
She has also spoken publicly about having endometriosis and about getting surgery to remove her uterus. She called endometriosis – a chronic disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus, causing severe pain and infertility in some cases – a “lonely disease.”
After her recent public appearances, much of the online commentary Schumer faced about her looks was not kind, as Yellin pointed out – highlighting how women are often publicly scrutinized and criticized for changes in their appearance. Schumer noted that not only did she have to grapple with concerns about her health, but that she “also had to be on camera having the internet chime in” on what she looked
like.
Still, she said, “that’s how I realized something was wrong.”
“This is a good example of the fact that we never know what is going on with someone,” Schumer said. “Everyone is struggling with something. Maybe we can all be a little kinder to each other and ourselves.”