Marina took to Instagram on Wednesday (July 12) and opened up to her fans and followers about the state of her health. The singer revealed that after multiple years of health issues, she’s been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as Myalgic encephalomyelitis.
“I’ve had symptoms like deep fatigue, numbness, tingling, low appetite, brain fog, rashes, insomnia and a feeling of being ‘poisoned’ for so long it’s been hard to remember what healthy feels like,” she wrote to caption a photo of herself. “My baseline energy has been at 50 – 60% for a long time. Aside from a few periods of remission, the last 7 years have consisted of relying on adrenaline and will power to push me through each day.”
The Wales native shared that she has been recovering for two months, which came after “an unusually bad flare up that involved shooting pains and burning sensations all over my hands, legs and back.” The event resulted in a visit to a functional medicine practitioner who helped her deal with the symptoms, which allowed her to learn that the flare-ups can be caused by “a hypersensitive nervous system, developed in response to chronic stress,” she explained.
Marina, however, remains optimistic about her condition and her ability to get back to making music again. “The key to healing seems to lie in retraining the nervous system to regulate itself again. The happy news is… (!) I am feeling better today than I have in a long time,” she said. “My energy levels are around 65 – 70% most days and the dips I have are shorter. Healing is demanding a lot of my energy and attention right now, but the better I feel, the sooner I can get back to my creative life again. I worked for the first time in a while yesterday and it felt so good.”
The pop singer concluded her note with empathy to all who silently struggle with chronic illnesses: “It’s hard to maintain optimism when the world feels like it’s moving on without you, but hope always exists. Answers always exist. The body wants to heal — and what I’ve learned is that you have to work with it, not against it.”
Read Marina’s Instagram post about her chronic fatigue syndrome diagnosis in full below.
