What We Know About Oprah Winfrey's Health Problems

As the old saying goes, health is wealth. Perhaps no one understands that more than the reigning "Queen of All Media" and self-made billionaire Oprah Winfrey. "With age comes the understanding and appreciation of your most important asset, your health," she once declared in an essay to her readers. 

Sadly, the famous talk show host, producer, and affluent mogul has experienced a plethora of health problems over the years, including misdiagnosed thyroid issues, a serious bout with pneumonia, and even double knee surgery. "These days, it's wonder I feel each time I get my annual physical and, during the stress test, hear the swoosh of my heart pumping blood," she confessed during another installment of her site's "What I Know For Sure" column (via E! News). "It's a reminder that, whatever age you're at, life has its own rhythm. My goal is to stay in step and not take one beat of it for granted."

In 2007, Oprah Winfrey revealed to her fans that she had been diagnosed with hyperthyroidism and hypothyroidism. "My body was turning on me," she confessed in the October 2007 issue of O Magazine."First hyperthyroidism, which sped up my metabolism ... Then hypothyroidism, which slowed down my metabolism," she explained. According to Oprah, she experienced a plethora of symptoms from the competing medical conditions, including chronic restlessness, extreme fatigue, heart palpitations, swelling of her legs, and uncontrollable weight gain. 

But it wasn't until 2022 that Oprah revealed that the thyroid problem had initially been misdiagnosed. "I had heart palpitations for an entire year, and I went to five different doctors. And every doctor just gave me a different medication. Nobody ever checked my blood until I went to the Cleveland Clinic, and they realized it wasn't a heart problem. It was a thyroid problem that was causing the heart palpitations," she told the Los Angeles Times. According to Oprah, she finally went back to one of the doctors who had performed an angiogram and explained that the problem was due to her thyroid, not her heart. "She said, 'What was I gonna do? You're Oprah Winfrey, and I wasn't going to have you die on me without having done everything I thought I could do,'" Oprah recalled. Alas, Winfrey's health problems didn't end there.

In 2019, during an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show," Oprah divulged that she had just been cleared from a severe bout of pneumonia. "Pneumonia is nothing to play with, y'all. It is very serious," she warned the audience. The story goes that after traveling overseas, the famous media mogul thought she had come down with a cold. But after a trip to the emergency room, she was diagnosed with pneumonia. Alas, things took a turn worse when the antibiotics she was prescribed failed to ward off the infection. It wasn't until a visit with a lung specialist that Oprah learned the severity of her illness. "He immediately said, 'You must cancel everything.' I've never canceled anything in my life," she recounted. "He's like, 'You must cancel everything. You can't fly for a month." 

Then, in 2022, Oprah opened up in her "The Life You Want" class with Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman and disclosed that she had two separate knee surgeries — first in August 2021 and then again in November 2021. "When I came home the first time, I literally could not lift my leg. I couldn't lift my heel off of the bed," she recalled. "I vowed if I was ever able to get up, walk around, and move again — that I would take advantage of movement, exercise, and of being able to be fully in my body." And that she has, as evidenced by her many hiking adventures with her BFF, Gayle King!