EXCLUSIVE Embarrassing illness Jennifer Aniston's hunky health guru boyfriend kept secret

Daily Mail​

17 hours ago

Jennifer Aniston's new boyfriend hid an embarrassing secret for years, Daily Mail can reveal.
Hypnotist health guru Jim Curtis, 49, says he suffered from acute irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) due to a chronic health condition and confessed that 'accidents happened a lot.'
Baring his troubled health history in a brave 2018 interview, Curtis said that a mystery condition gave him the embarrassing symptom that sometimes left him caught short in airports – as well as causing a host of other debilitating and serious afflictions.
But he said he kept his illness secret from colleagues at his 'macho' Wall Street job, instead telling them he was in a motorcycle accident.
'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,' Curtis told Fast Company magazine in 2018.
'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.'
Curtis, who has been thrust into the spotlight after being pictured on a romantic vacation with new beau Anniston, revealed that his health troubles began at age 19, 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.'
Curtis, who has been thrust into the spotlight after being pictured on a romantic vacation with new beau Anniston, revealed that his health troubles began at age 19, when he started to lose the use of his legs and found lesions on his spinal cord
'I was definitely depressed. You don't realize what a toll that takes. I was in sales, I was entertaining [and consumed] a lot of bad food and alcohol and was easily 50 pounds overweight,' Curtis said
'It was unknown how they started, but I very rapidly became ill and soon had trouble walking,' he told Fast Company.
He suffered pain, headaches, muscle spasticity, and paralysis. Top neurologists at the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins couldn't figure out what was wrong.
But with treatment he was eventually able to return to his studies at the University of New Hampshire, getting around campus on a motorbike and fitted with a catheter from a vein in his arm to the top of his heart, he told the university alumni magazine in a 2017 interview.
He said things got worse after college, when he started a job on Wall Street.
'Wall Street comes with a lot of macho ego,' he told Fast Company. '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.'
With treatment Curtis was eventually able to return to his studies at the University of New Hampshire, getting around campus on a motorbike and fitted with a catheter from a vein in his arm to the top of his heart
After two years he left finance and went into sales, working for publisher OnHealth.
He still hid his condition, and occasionally faced the embarrassing consequences of trying to schlep across the country with crippling IBS.
'I was definitely depressed. You don't realize what a toll that takes. I was in sales, I was entertaining [and consumed] a lot of bad food and alcohol and was easily 50 pounds overweight,' he said.
'I learned quickly [to be] charming to manipulate people into not asking what was wrong with me, and because I was happy–seemingly–and the best at what I was doing, no one really questioned me.'
Curtis moved to another health publisher, Remedy Health Media, and he credited his boss there, CEO Mike Cunnion, for helping turn his life around.
'He would always ask me, 'How are you feeling? How's your health?'' Curtis said. 'He said to me, 'You're doing great and you're an amazing person. Why do you hate yourself?'
'He set me up with my first big speaking engagement, which allowed me to share the truth of my struggle to 700 people in the industry,' the hypnotist added. 'Everything changed after that.'
Curtis has since written two self-help books, tours the country speaking at health conferences, and sells holistic health coaching courses for tens of thousands of dollars.
He has trained in hypnotism and says he uses the practice to help people overcome their own obstacles.
His clients reportedly include model Miranda Kerr, television host Julianne Hough, and model and entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen.
'Through hypno-realizations, I not only transformed my health, anxiety and relationships, I've helped thousands of others break free from their past & patterns to create an entirely new reality full of connection, community and love,' Curtis says on his website.