Kenan Thompson’s health is no joke. The Saturday Night Live star—who continues to extend his reign as the show’s longest-running cast member at 22 seasons—revealed that, over two years ago, he began privately suffering from painful acid reflux. And it got so detrimental that it began affecting his work before he finally sought help.
“I noticed that I would get hoarse a lot easier when I’m doing the show,” Kenan told People in an interview published April 4. “Losing my voice quicker, but also uncomfortable sleepless nights because I’m burping up acid, just kind of hiccuping all night. And that can definitely add more stress to an already stressful kind of environment doing a live show like that.”
He added, “So all of those factors, I was like, ‘Whatever, I’ll get over it.’ But it just started to pile up.” Before ultimately being diagnosed with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD)—a condition where stomach acid repeatedly flows back up into the esophagus and irritates its lining, according to Mayo Clinic—the 46-year-old had been trying to manage the pain on his own.
“I was able to take something and patch it up for the moment, but I got to a point where that didn’t work anymore,” he continued. “That’s when it got serious. It was a suffering-in-silence situation.” Kenan also admitted, “I don’t know if I was necessarily embarrassed to talk to a doctor—I just didn’t know if I needed to.” But once he finally sought help for his condition, the comedian—who shares daughters Georgia, 10, and Gianna, 6, with ex Christina Evangeline—learned “there was a real medical term for it” and began making lifestyle changes and taking medicine to fight back against his GERD.
“I felt relief pretty immediately,” Kenan said. “God bless, I feel great. I’m in a much healthier kind of space with my daily lifestyle and meal decision-making and all of that good stuff. I’m in a good place.”
