DWTS’ Alan Bersten Reveals Health Scare to People Magazine

Well this is quite frightening, but I will tell you right off the bat that there is a happy ending! And note that you should always pay attention to your body and be aggressive when it comes to making sure you get the right treatment. Alan had a thyroid tumor that could have been ugly, but all appears well now. I’ve put a little excerpt below, click the link to read the whole article. Quite informative, IMO.

Though he says he felt “fine,” Bersten’s mother pushed him to go back to the doctor to get another blood test. A week later, he got the results and found that it was not supplements causing this but rather a tumor on one of his parathyroid glands.

There are four of these very small glands located on the thyroid gland in the neck that produce parathyroid hormone (PTH), which helps control the amount of calcium in the blood. A tumor, like Bersten’s, causes the affected gland to release more PTH than it should and disrupts the balance of calcium in the blood. It’s still unknown how people develop the disorder, but it’s typically most common in older women.

Bersten was told that to treat this potentially fatal condition — called hyperparathyroidism — an endocrinologist would have to remove the tumor and check if it was malignant (cancerous) or benign (non cancerous).

“Just the word tumor is so frightening,” he says. “I didn’t know what malignant or benign meant until I looked it up and I was like, ‘Well hopefully it’s benign — God forbid I have cancer.’ That is more stress than I could ever imagine. I think the scariest part was not knowing.”