Imagine Dragons Frontman Dan Reynolds Opens Up About ‘Debilitating’ Chronic Disease: ‘I Couldn’t Perform’

Pinterest Courtesy This AS Life Live! Eight years ago, Dan Reynolds was on the cusp of stardom — but his health was in turmoil. Reynolds, the frontman of Grammy-award winning band Imagine Dragons, tells PEOPLE that at age 21 he began to experience “debilitating” pain that forced him to cancel shows. “It was beyond the pain that you feel when it’s just a back ache. It felt like someone was drilling my nerves,” he says. “It was right when the band was starting to have minor success — we were starting to sell out small clubs, and we were playing these very active shows and it started to make me have to cancel shows.” He adds, “I couldn’t get on stage. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t sleep at night, I couldn’t perform without standing perfectly still. I couldn’t sit down for more than a half an hour.” Yet, countless visits to doctors couldn’t diagnose the pain source. Some suggested that Reynolds had sciatica, but the appropriate treatment didn’t combat it. The experience, Reynolds says, was “frustrating.” Then, at the suggestion of his brother, the vocalist consulted a rheumatologist to see if he had ankylosing spondylitis, a condition that two of his siblings suffer from. Ankylosing spondylitis, often referenced as AS, is a chronic inflammatory condition of the joints that can lead to extreme pain and in the worst cases, spinal fusion. “I went, and then they did the test to see if it’s in your genes — which it was, because it’s an autoimmune disease,” he says. “And then they diagnosed me and put me on a treatment plan, which fixed me almost immediately. Which was another sign that that’s what it was.” Reynolds’ treatment involves staying active and eating healthy — he does a lot of yoga, he says. What works is different for everyone though, he specifies, but swears by his rheumatologist. Now 29, Reynolds admits that he felt hesitation about sharing his diagnosis with Imagine Dragons’ fans. “I was shy to reveal it because it made me feel like something was wrong with me, or — to say the word disease, it’s such a drastic sounding word,” he says. “And I didn’t want to admit to myself, or to anybody, that I was struggling with a disease.” Now, after opening up, the singer says he’s not sure what he was afraid of — and that he’s ready to help others feel the same way through This AS Life Live!, an online, interactive talk show for patients with AS, hosted by patients with AS. “I have a chance to really raise awareness and help people that are just becoming diagnosed to see that there’s actually light at the end of the tunnel,” he tells PEOPLE of This AS Life Live!, which is in partnership with the Spondylitis Association of America (SAA) and Novartis. “For me, I really wish that there was a place that I could have gone to where I was seeing a direct community. People talking […]

Imagine Dragons Frontman Dan Reynolds Opens Up About ‘Debilitating’ Chronic Disease: ‘I Couldn’t Perform’ is republished from cellulitesolutions.org

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