Bristol Palin Reveals She's Been Dealing with 'Crazy' Facial Paralysis. Says Doctors Believe It's Bell’s Palsy

Mar. 15, 2025

Bristol Palin reveals facial paralysis on her Instagram Stories.Photo:Bristol Palin/Instagram

Bristol Palin/Instagram

Bristol Palinhas shared that she’s been dealing with facial paralysis.

The 34-year-old daughter of former Alaskan governorSarah Palinopened up about the health scare — which she says began a little over a week ago — and her road to recovery on herInstagram Storieson Wednesday, Jan. 29.

“I woke up nine days ago with a little weird sensation in my face,” Palin told her followers while sitting down at a table. “My mouth was pulling this way and it just felt a little off. So I went, looked in the mirror. I’m like ‘Wow. This is looking a little weird.’ ”

Alongside the clips of her detailing what happened, she also shared a set of videos showing the onset of her facial paralysis and the days afterward. One clip showed her waking up and looking in the mirror as she said, “I feel like everything is pulling to the left.” The timestamp on the video read 10:30 a.m.

Bristol Palin shows off her facial paralysis on one side of her face on Instagram.Bristol Palin/Instagram

A few hours later, at 5 p.m., the facial paralysis appeared to get much worse, as she showed another video of the left side of her face appearing to have a “delayed” reaction. In the clip, she made several faces, noting that the “entire” left side of her face was “just numb.” She added, “It’s so bad dude.”

“Within a couple hours the entire left side of my face was numb and just paralyzed,” she recalled of the experience in her initial video. “Couldn’t really blink my eye. Definitely had no movement on [the left side] of my face. So crazy.”

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Bristol Palin shows the trajectory of her facial paralysis.Bristol Palin/Instagram

Palin said she went to the doctor’s office and they “ran tests” and did a “CT scan,” which X-rayed her body to check for possible causes. However, she noted that “nothing came back in all the results” and doctors put her on “steroids” and “other medications.”

She noted that “eastern medicine” has been helping her symptoms, and she has “been getting acupuncture multiple times.” She explained that has “helped speed up the process of recovery tremendously.”

Bristol Palin shares an update after experiencing facial paralysis.Bristol Palin/Instagram

In the additional clips she shared of her experience, she could be seen detailing her symptoms, which included a “dry” eye because she was unable to blink her right eye as easily and a painful nose. She also showed the progression of her facial paralysis over the next week up until “day eight” where she noted that she thought it was “getting a little better.”

“I know I look crazy right now, but this has been such an improvement from what I was looking like,” she said in a video on her Instagram Stories. “I’m finally starting to get some of the sensation back. It’s been a little painful the last two days, which is a [good] sign. It’s a good indication that it’s getting better. Praise the lord!”

“But the next time that I look in the mirror and I pick myself apart where it’s like, ‘Oh my nose is long. I want a nose job. I want to do this. I want to do that,’ I am going to remember this and I am just going to be so thankful for a normal functioning face cause this has been wild,” the mother of three added.

source: people.com