CURE DEFORCE
In her battle with Lyme disease, this reality star reveals how she spent a fortune on quixotic trips around the world for ‘crazy’ off-label health fixes
FORMER model Yolanda Hadid drew cheers and skepticism when she went public with her fight against chronic neurological Lyme disease on “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” in 2013.
The cameras tagged along as Yolanda, 53, experimented with treatments and struggled to make it to social events, telling castmates and viewers that her chronic disease left her too tired to get out of bed some days. But some accused her of inventing symptoms to gain sympathy, and a few of her fellow Housewives even suggested that Yolanda — who is the mother of supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid — may instead suffer from Munchausen syndrome, a mental disorder in which sufferers feign illness.
Yolanda was diagnosed with Lyme in late 2012, after first being told that she suffered from chronic fatigue syndrome — a diagnosis she said just didn’t feel right. Finally, a doctor in Belgium told Yolanda that her mysterious condition was a case of chronic neurological Lyme disease (a diagnosis that’s controversial among American doctors), which meant that the Lyme bacteria had set up shop in her brain.
In her new memoir, “Believe Me” (St. Martin’s Press, out Tuesday), Yolanda reveals the reallife drama behind her onscreen struggle — and the dozens of experimental procedures she underwent to fight her disease, from international stem-cell transfusions to thrice-weekly colonics, along with alternative herbal treatments, including magic mushrooms in Bali and an ayahuasca ceremony in California.
“I had a lot of balls to do what I did — driving across the border to Tijuana [, Mexico,] in the middle of the night, and doing crazy treatments,” Yolanda tells The Post. “It’s crazy, but it was do-or-die for me. When I was in it, I had no fear.”
Yolanda’s attempts at curing Lyme — detailed in her book and on the following pages — may seem excessive, but she says that she was desperate to find something to cure her aches, brain fog, vision loss and other symptoms of the disease. “You keep thinking, ‘One more week, two weeks, 90 days of antibiotics and I’ll be back in the game,’ ” she says.
The stakes were raised when, a few years into her own fight, two of her children — 20-year-old model Bella and 18-year-old
Anwar — were diagnosed as well.
“People see Bella on the covers of magazines looking so beautiful, [but] they don’t know the heartache she has, and the pain and joint aches and exhaustion that she faces seven days of the week,” Yolanda says.
Yolanda, a successful model herself, was previously married to real estate tycoon Mohamed Hadid and, during her Lyme disease fight, music big shot David Foster. Yolanda and Foster divorced in 2016, after he reportedly told her that her “sick card [was] up.”
But nearly five years after her initial diagnosis, Yolanda says that the financial burden of Lyme was astounding. Based on details revealed in the book and current rates for some of the treatments, she must have spent upward of $150,000 trying to cure herself.
“I never kept a tally and I didn’t count it, but I can tell you that it’s a lot,” Yolanda says. “People spend their life savings on finding a cure, and there is no cure.”
She’s even learned how to give herself IVs — setting up a temporary treatment lab in her house — to keep her costs down.
Yolanda’s health has steadily improved over the past year, but she hasn’t given up the fight.
“I’m still on a very strict holistic plan, which really supports my immune system, because even in remission, I don’t think I can ever take my foot off the pedal and live my life the way I used to,” she says.
Yolanda’s current plan includes twice-a- week vitamin IVs, a “toxin-free” diet and medications prescribed by Dietrich Klinghardt, a Woodinville, Wash.-based doctor who specializes in chronic illness.
“I pinch myself every morning because I feel so much gratitude for being alive, and being able to be back working,” she says. Here is a breakdown of Yolanda’s wild health odyssey, which includes some medically questionable and unnecessary procedures.
Sponaugle Wellness Institute, about$30,000
Yolanda kicked off her treatment attempts in early 2013 with six weeks at Sponaugle, a Lyme-focused clinic in Oldsmar, Florida. Experimental treatments included IV drips, colonics, coffee enemas, chiropractic adjustments and large numbers of supplements. She felt better, she says, but it wasn’t the cure she’d hoped for.
Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland, about $30,000 to $45,000
Both Yolanda and then-husband David Foster flew to the Paracelsus Clinic in Lustmühle, Switzerland, for treatments in September 2013 — three weeks of Lyme-focused procedures for her, and a week of general upkeep for him. She received IV infusions, ozone therapy — thought to activate the immune system — and a form of acupuncture called neural therapy. She also underwent hyperthermia, spending several hours in a chamber that heated her body to 103 degrees. The heat is supposed to kill viruses and bacteria, although the treatment has only been studied in cancer patients, not those who suffer from Lyme.
“The bottom line is that Paracelsus wasn’t a magic bullet for me, and I’m learning that even the best clinics in the world cannot cure chronic Lyme,” she writes. “There is little magic in the world of the chronically ill.”
TMS, roughly $14,400 for 36 sessions
Transcranial magnetic stimulation, or TMS, has been shown to help patients with major depression who don’t respond to medication, although Yolanda says that she underwent the procedures at UCLA Medical Center to combat her neurological fog.
“After six weeks, my mood feels calmer and my brain function is a little more accessible,” she writes. “But once again, it doesn’t last and certainly is not a cure.”
While the FDA-approved treatment can be covered by insurance in certain cases, an outof-pocket session usually costs around $400.
Stem-cell treatment in Tijuana, Mexico, $30,000
In spring 2014, Yolanda made her first trip to Tijuana for an embryonic stem-cell treatment with William Rader. (The treatment isn’t legal in the US, and Rad- er’s medical license was revoked by California authorities for negligence, professional misconduct, and false or misleading advertising, according to the LA Times). She ends up having to walk back across the border in what she describes as “a scene straight out of ‘Dallas Buyers Club,’ ” and says the energy-lifting results only lasted a few weeks.
Anti-parasitic and anti-malaria drugs, $15,000
New York-based Lyme expert Richard Horowitz prescribed anti-parasite and antimalaria medication to combat Yolanda’s disease in November 2014, which she took for three months.
“I’m appalled and infuriated .. . by how expensive these medications are,” she writes. “Just one bottle of Mepron medication is