Brooke Shields has revealed she recently suffered a grand mal seizure from drinking too much water.
In her 2023 Woman of the Year interview with Glamour, published on Wednesday 1 November, the actress said when preparing for her show at The Carlyle she had fallen “headfirst” into a wall and began “frothing at the mouth”.
Shields explained that, during her preparation, she was overdoing the amount of water she was drinking. “I was preparing for the show, and I was drinking so much water, and I didn’t know I was low in sodium,” she said. “I was waiting for an Uber. I get down to the bottom of the steps, and I start evidently looking weird, and [the people I was with] were like: ‘Are you okay?’”
According to Shields, she ended up walking over to a restaurant when the collapse happened. “I go in, two women come up to me; I don’t know them. Everything starts to go black. Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall,” Shields recalled.
The Pretty Baby star continued, adding that she was “frothing at the mouth, totally blue, trying to swallow my tongue”. A grand mal seizure causes a loss of consciousness and violent muscle contractions, according to the Mayo Clinic, which describes it as what a person would typically think of when picturing a seizure.
Her next memory is being in an ambulance with an oxygen mask held up to her face with Bradley Cooper next to her holding her hand.
“I thought to myself: ‘This is what death must be like.’ You wake up and Bradley Cooper’s going: ‘I’m going to go to the hospital with you, Brooke,’ and he’s holding my hand. And I’m looking at my hand, I’m looking at Bradley Cooper’s hand in my hand, and I’m like: ‘This is odd and surreal,’” the actress recalled.
According to Glamour, the sommelier at the restaurant tried to get in touch with Shields’ husband Chris Henchy. But only his assistant could be reached, who then reached out to Cooper’s assistant because the actor was nearby at the time.
“His assistant called Bradley and said: ‘Brooke’s on the ground. Chris isn’t around. Go get her.’ And he came, and somebody called the ambulance. And then it was like, I walked in with Jesus,” Shields said.
According to Shields, when she arrived at the hospital, she begged the doctors to make her better, so she could still perform at The Carlyle. However, they ended up placing her in the intensive care unit (ICU) because they thought “her brain was seizing”.
Her team of doctors determined that the seizure was caused by low sodium. “I had had too much water. I flooded my system, and I drowned myself. And if you don’t have enough sodium in your blood or urine or your body, you can have a seizure,” Shields explained.
Drinking too much water is rare, according to the Mayo Clinic. Although those who usually overhydrate are athletes as they try to prevent dehydration during prolonged periods of exercise. When you drink too much water, your kidneys can’t get rid of the excess water and the sodium content of your blood becomes diluted. This is called hyponatremia and it can be life-threatening.
According to the model, this led to concern from particularly her male doctors, who questioned whether or not she was actively limiting her salt intake instead of simply overhydrating. The actress said the assumption upset her.
“Stop trying to make me a crazy actress or a female that doesn’t know what the f**k they’re doing,” she said of the interaction. “I was drinking too much water because I felt dehydrated because I was singing more than I’ve ever sung in my life and doing a show and a podcast.”
