Tulisa Contostavlos has addressed vile comments about her appearance after a cruel troll said she ‘looked like she had a stroke’.
The 36-year-old has entered the I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! jungle alongside a host of fellow famous faces. Ahead of her stint on the hit ITV show, the former N-Dubz singer spoke out about her battle with Bell’s palsy.
It came after years of comments about her appearance and speculation she had undergone cosmetic surgery. Bell’s palsy can cause one side of a sufferer's face to droop, while they can also have problems speaking.
An attack can last up to six months and is treated with steroids. Tulisa says she was 24 when she first had a Bell’s palsy attack, and “didn’t leave the house for months” afterwards.
And in an unearthed Loose Women interview from 2020, the star discussed the cruel reactions online when the condition hit. She said: “The first attack I had was after a horse riding accident and I fractured my skull.
“It caused a lot of nerve damage and the Bells Palsy can cause facial paralysis and swelling. There’s actually been times where people have criticised me for the way I look, for my face, and not knowing it’s a Bells Palsy attack.
“It was [on] an ITV appearance a while back where someone said ‘she looks like she’s had a stroke’ and that can be the effect of a Bells Palsy attack.
“I have emergency steroids on me and luckily I know how to manage it. “Now the attacks don’t last as long. If you have steroids within a 72-hour period it can last days instead of months.”
Tulisa says some of the comments she has received on social media were deemed “too bad” to be broadcast on the daytime TV show. She added: “I had people referencing my uncle’s death, my mother’s mental illness. Loads of threats, just the lowest of the low, very personal things.”
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Tulisa’s mother, Anne, suffers from schizoaffective disorder, which can present with symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. In her book, Honest: My Story So Far, the former X Factor judge said it meant her earliest childhood memories are “not happy ones”.
The I’m A Celeb campmate recently admitted she had plastic surgery for the first time to correct years of fillers she had done after her first Bell’s palsy attack. Speaking on Olivia Attwood’s So Wrong It’s Right podcast, she explained she had the fillers dissolved, but surgeons found three cysts in her face that were swelling up and then scarring over repeatedly.
She said her face was instantly “less swollen” after the operation to sort the cysts, but says she will have to have further operations to fix the issue.
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