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Miranda Hart has responded to criticism of the health information shared in her new autobiography.
The 51-year-old comedian, best known for her eponymous BBC show Miranda, recently released a revealing autobiography that provides a frank account of her experiences with chronic illness that left her bedbound.
In I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, Hart recounts her three-decade long health battle that initially saw her diagnosed with agoraphobia. She later learned that her undiagnosed Lyme disease had developed into chronic fatigue syndrome.
However, the comedian has faced criticism for appearing to indicate that conditions such as long Covid, ME and chronic fatigue syndrome are related to the “brain’s heightened stress response”. Others have accussed the TV star of suggesting she has a cure for these illnesses.
Responding online, Hart said there has been a “misunderstanding” around whether she claims she has found a cure for chronic fatigue syndrome.
“I don’t. It’s a story of all the pieces of the puzzle that helped me free myself to be less stressed and more wholly and freely me,” she wrote on Instagram.
Hart said people had misunderstood what she had written about how she found that lessened stress was beneficial for her symptoms, but that didn’t mean she was suggesting she had found a cure.
“I am not saying I have found a cure or profess to know any medical in-depth knowledge for ME. It’s a ghastly misunderstood condition and many don’t get any alleviation. Which hurts my heart,” she wrote.
“I just believe reducing any fear when living with an illness can but help our quality of life. But it’s very hard and I can only speak from my experience. It was research that speaks to all aspects of life too”.
Hart has now turned off commenting on her Instagram posts and shared a separate video in which she tells people, “I’m not a medic”.
“To those of you who are fellow chronic illness sufferers, please know that I don’t profess to know the answers. I just share what I learnt for all of us, not just chronic illness sufferers. It doesn’t mean I’m saying that cures medical conditions I know nothing about.”
Speaking about her diagnosis in her book, Hart said it was easier to describe her illness to others when the world learnt about long-Covid and extreme fatigue post-pandemic.
“After long Covid this is more understood; I can say I have long Lyme and people understand a little more easily. Year on year, the ‘chronic fatigue, ME, long post-viral condition’ bracket is getting more visible. I hope so, for it is a very real, severe, physical illness,” said Hart.
She writes: “For me it was the unnerving neurological symptoms that I had got initially, aged fourteen, from Lyme, which I always found particularly hard to deal with.
“And they got considerably worse as I headed into my forties. As did the fatigue from the cell depletion. Yup, all delightful.”
Lyme disease is a bacterial infection which can lead to severe physical and mental problems if not diagnosed at an early stage. It is typically spread to humans via infected ticks, which will have already bitten an infected animal such as deer, mouse, vole or hedgehog. Other insects also carry the disease.
