TV’s Gemma: Anorexia9 nearly killed me at 12 HEART ATTACK HELL FOR STAR
Anneka’s slip agony
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MMA star Conor McGregor looks like he’s winning his latest fight – over a sun lounger with long-term girlfriend Dee Devlin.
The happy couple were seen looking chilled on the Amalfi Coast in Italy. Irish fighter Conor also enjoyed a workout with some weights.
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The trip came amid a new controversy after a video allegedly showed Conor hitting a man in a Dublin bar. EMMERDALE star Gemma Oaten has revealed she was so weak during her 13-year battle with anorexia she was on the brink of death.
The television favourite also said the eating disorder triggered a heart attack when she was a teenager.
She said: “At 12 years old a medical assessment pulled me from my home and into a psychiatric unit.
“I was so weak they had to push me in a wheelchair and I was told that if I didn’t eat and drink within
24 hours that I’d be dead.”
“I’ve had some amazing experiences. But I’ve also had some really frightening ones, like a heart attack in my late teens.
“That heart attack was my body failing in the grips of an eating disorder.
“I was in the grips of that monster for 13 years.”
Deadly
Gemma, 35, who played troubled Rachel Breckle in the soap, added: “People often think and hear that an eating disorder is a way of controlling something and that’s what I believed, but ultimately you lose control of everything.”
Her parents first realised there was a problem when she was only 10 – but doctors failed to take their fears seriously.
They set up eating disorder charity SEED (Support and Empathy for Eating Disorders) to help people who are suffering.
Gemma said: “Eating disorders are deadly and no-one has to die from them but people still do. Rapid weight loss or weight gain that has no medical cause is an external expression of something that is already there.
“Waiting for the weight to change isn’t going to stop what is already there.”
Gemma spoke out about her experience at a TEDx event, which can be watched at ted.com/tedx
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ANNEKA Rice has become the latest victim of Strictly’s new curse – after taking a tumble while preparing for her first live dance.
The telly presenter, 60, has been pushing herself to improve her Latin and ballroom routines before the new series gets under way on Saturday, September 7.
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She said: “I fell badly on a wet grassy slope. I have been in physio so haven’t done what I needed to do.”