Jennifer Aniston's health guru boyfriend kept embarrassing illness secret

Daily Mirror

16 hours ago

Jennifer hasn't publicly dated anyone since her 2018 divorce from Justin Theroux, but was spotted over the 4th of July weekend alongside hypnotist and wellness coach Jim Curtis
Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend hid an embarrassing secret about his health for years and things got so bad it caused him to feel "depressed".
The actress, who hasn't publicly dated anyone since her 2018 divorce from Justin Theroux, was spotted over the 4th of July weekend alongside hypnotist and wellness coach Jim Curtis and her longtime friends Jason Bateman and Amanda Anka.
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Jim may be a new face to Hollywood fans, but he's well-established in the wellness world. On his official website, he describes himself as a 'wellness pioneer, author, and hypnotist.' But over the years he has battled his own health issues.
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Jim, 49, says he suffered from acute irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) due to a chronic health condition and confessed that "accidents happened a lot. In a 2018 interview, Jim said he kept his illness secret from colleagues and instead told them he was in a motorcycle accident.
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Jim told Fast Company magazine in 2018: "Up until 10 years ago, I had IBS, and accidents happened a lot. As a salesperson on the road a lot, I would have to walk through major airports literally for a couple miles; I didn't want to wait for a wheelchair and trip and fall and be so sweaty.
"I was doing that and not talking about it and pushing through. When something terrible happened–which it did–I would go into disaster mode or go home and take care of it and go back to work for another day."
Jim revealed that his health troubles began as a teenager, when he started to lose the use of his legs and found lesions on his spinal cord. Things got so bad, he said, that at one point he "wanted to die." He suffered pain, headaches, muscle spasticity, and paralysis but top neurologists couldn't figure out what was wrong.
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He said things got worse after college, when he started a job on Wall Street. He told Fast Company: "Wall Street comes with a lot of macho ego. It couldn't have been a worse choice. I had to stand up in a crowd all day. It was super high-stress, which is inflammatory and devastating for a condition like mine.
"It increased symptoms of fatigue and pain, and it brought on new ones like IBS and other things I couldn't control. I was walking with a limp and I didn't want to get into the 'why.' So for most of the time I lied. I said I'd been in an accident–often it was motorcycle accident–because that fit perfectly, that's kinda cool and that's tough enough."
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He explained how he hid his condition from employers and colleagues for years and said he was "depressed" from the the embarrassing consequences caused by the crippling IBS, reports MailOnline.
IBS is a common condition that affects the digestive system. It can cause stomach cramps, bloating and diarrhoea. It's usually a lifelong condition but lifestyle changes and medicine can help. The exact cause is unknown – it's been linked to things like food passing through your gut too quickly or too slowly, gastroenteritis, oversensitivity in your gut, stress and a family history of IBS.
There's no test for IBS, but you might need some tests to rule out other possible causes of your symptoms. The GP may arrange a blood test to check for problems like coeliac diseas or other tests on a sample of your poo to check for infections and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).