<\/p>\n
\n\tKenan Thompson<\/a> is opening up about a recent health<\/a> diagnosis after \u201csuffering in silence\u201d for years.<\/p>\n \n\tThe comedian-actor, 46, who has been a castmember of Saturday Night Live<\/a><\/em> for more than two decades, recently told People<\/em> magazine<\/a> that he first started experiencing painful heartburn, specifically after eating acidic foods, two years ago, so much so that it was impacting his SNL<\/a><\/em> workdays.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI noticed that I would get hoarse a lot easier when I\u2019m doing the show. Losing my voice quicker, but also uncomfortable sleepless nights because I\u2019m burping up acid, just kind of hiccuping all night,\u201d Thompson explained. \u201cAnd that can definitely add more stress to an already stressful kind of environment doing a live show like that. So all of those factors, I was like, whatever, I\u2019ll get over it. But it just started to pile up.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tThe Good Burger 2<\/em> star said he tried to take over-the-counter medications, but that it \u201cgot to a point where that didn\u2019t work anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThat\u2019s when it got serious,\u201d he added. \u201cIt was a suffering-in-silence situation. I don\u2019t know if I was necessarily embarrassed to talk to a doctor \u2014 I just didn\u2019t know if I needed to.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tAfter Thompson\u2019s symptoms reached their \u201cmost extreme\u201d point in early 2024, that\u2019s when he decided to visit a doctor and was immediately diagnosed with Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD). It occurs when \u201cstomach acid repeatedly flows back up into the tube connecting the mouth and stomach, called the esophagus,\u201d according to the\u00a0Mayo Clinic<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cThis backwash is known as acid reflux.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI didn\u2019t know there was a real medical term for it,\u201d Thompson admitted, noting that he \u201cfelt relief pretty immediately\u201d once his doctor prescribed him Voquezna, a potassium competitive acid blocker, to treat the chronic condition.<\/p>\n \n\tThompson, who has partnered with Phathom Pharmaceuticals for the\u00a0GERD IS NO JOKE\u00a0campaign to raise awareness about GERD and Voquezna, said his health is doing better since starting treatment.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cGod bless, I feel great,\u201d he added. \u201cI\u2019m in a much healthier kind of space with my daily lifestyle and meal decision-making and all of that good stuff. I\u2019m in a good place.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kenan Thompson is opening up about a recent health diagnosis after \u201csuffering in silence\u201d for years. The comedian-actor, 46, who has been a castmember of Saturday Night Live for more than two decades, recently told People magazine that he first started experiencing painful heartburn, specifically after eating acidic foods, two years ago, so much so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":719,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[741,192,738,740,743,742,739],"class_list":{"0":"post-718","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fashion","8":"tag-diagnosis","9":"tag-health","10":"tag-kenan","11":"tag-reveals","12":"tag-silence","13":"tag-suffering","14":"tag-thompson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=718"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":720,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718\/revisions\/720"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}