The Bachelorette's Ryan Sutter Reveals His Diagnosis After Battling Mystery Illness

Ryan Sutter, who you may know as the winner of Trista‘s season of The Bachelorette many years ago, has been suffering from a mystery illness for months now.

The 46-year-old former reality star and firefighter opened up about his illness in November of 2020 and now, he finally has a diagnosis and is ready to share.

Click inside for what Ryan Sutter shared…

While appearing on his wife’s podcast, Better Etc., he revealed he has Lyme Disease and a few other ailments. He was experiencing “almost-paralyzing fatigue” from his health issues.

“It seems to be that what happened is that my immune system was weakened through exposures to toxins and especially to mold,” he said. “There are other people in the fire academy that probably had the same exposures who aren’t dealing with these exposures because their genetics are stronger, they’re able to get rid of the toxins easier.”

“On top of being exposed to mold, I was also dealing with these long days, with exhaustion, dehydration; all these other things that weaken your immune system,” he explained. “So my immune system was weakened, making it difficult to fight off infections, or what it seems like, allowing prior infections that my immune system had been able to sort of suppress and keep down, to resurface.”

“I now essentially have Lyme disease — it seems like something that I will always have, it’s just that now I know, and I will try to build back my immune system to fight it off. And Epstein-Barr — I showed that virus, and this weakened immune system may have allowed that to come back in. On top of that, COVID, I tested positive for that,” he continued.

Trista herself added, “It’s been hard. It’s a really difficult thing to see the person you love most in the world struggling. And he’s a big, strong guy, and oof — to see him get emotional and feel hopeless, in that all I could really do is advocate for him, so that’s what I did.”

As for how Ryan is healing, he explained, “What I’m doing is avoiding, as best I can, gluten, dairy and refined sugars. I’ve added a ton more fruits and vegetables to my diet, things that are easily digestible … I’ve gone on specific diets and things to try to alleviate a lot of those things so my internal organs can function more efficiently and begin to fight back some of these viruses and bacteria that they were able to hold back prior to going through this last year.”

We’re wishing Ryan all the best!

So many celebrities have opened up about their chronic illnesses and diagnoses over the years.

Just a few years ago, Trista suffered a scary medical event herself. We’re wishing the Sutter family well! If you don’t know, Trista was the first Bachelorette and they met and got married after their season aired.