Jennifer Esposito Says Celiac Disease Symptoms Led Her to a Psychiatric Evaluation

Actress Jennifer Esposito experienced some shocking symptoms, including having her hair and nails fall out, brought on by celiac disease. (Photo: Getty Images)

In an upcoming episode of OWN’s Oprah: Where Are They Now?, actress Jennifer Esposito reveals that chronic symptoms from celiac disease landed her in a mental facility.

Esposito said she pleaded with her doctor to help her, saying she was “jumping out of her skin.” “I thought I was going to be checked in to the hospital, and they checked me in to the psych ward,” said the 43-year-old, as reported by People. “And I’m thinking, How did I get here? This is a problem with my system; this is not a problem with my brain. I was almost dead — my hair was falling out, my eyelashes fell off, my fingernails were falling off. I was bad.”

According to the Celiac Disease Foundation (CDF), there are more than 200 symptoms associated with this condition, a genetic disorder in which ingesting gluten leads to damage to the small intestine.

“We now know that celiac disease is truly a systemic autoimmune disease and it can affect any tissue and organ in the body,” Maureen Leonard, MD, clinical director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children and instructor at Harvard Medical School, tells Yahoo Beauty.

These symptoms are referred to as gastrointestinal manifestations and extraintestinal manifestations, “meaning all of the things we see that are outside of the GI [gastrointestinal] tract.” For example, a skin rash known as dermatitis herpetiformis may develop, along with numerous nondescript signs, such as fatigue, headache, joint pain, and unexplained infertility.

And then there are the rare yet severe cases that include psychiatric symptoms, such as the one published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine (which was presented by Leonard and her colleagues from Massachusetts General Hospital). “A woman was placed in a psychiatric hospital for delusions related to untreated celiac disease,” she says.

Leonard further explains that the longer someone goes undiagnosed, the more complicated the condition becomes. “You may have these extraintestinal symptoms, and that’s happening while the damage to the small intestines is ongoing,” she says.

As a result, this continuous cycle could lead to malabsorption (the inability to absorb nutrients), and these micronutrient deficiencies can bring on additional symptoms, including weight loss, diarrhea, anxiety, and memory loss, as well as hair and fingernail loss, as Esposito experienced.

“This is why we feel so strongly about education,” stresses Leonard. “One in 100 people have celiac disease, and the majority of them are not going to have the so-called classic symptoms.” In fact, the CDF notes that 2.5 million Americans are undiagnosed and are at risk for long-term health complications. “We need our primary-care physicians, hematologists, ob-gyns, and psychiatrists to think about celiac disease as an autoimmune disease and [causing] malabsorption,” she says.

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