Bella Hadid Resurfaces at Radical Clinic for Rare Disease Treatment

Wired up to various machines, an exhausted and weeping Bella Hadid clung desperately to her mother.

The image was a far cry from the flawless posts of the glamorous life she shares on Instagram, dominating catwalks in designer clothes and posing seductively with her A-list harem.

The distressing images of the supermodel were posted publicly by her mother, Dutch reality TV star Yolanda Hadid, from a specialist hospital in Germany last month as she updated fans on her daughter’s ongoing battle with what she describes as chronic neurological Lyme disease.

Now, an insider exclusively tells the Daily Mail about Bella’s grueling therapy overseas and why cost is no obstacle for her mother – even amid suspicion about the model’s condition.

Bella, 28, underwent one month of invasive treatments at Germany’s St George Hospital, with Yolanda, 61, telling fans her ‘bada** warrior’ daughter has been living in an ‘unknown hell’ since she was first diagnosed, aged 16, in 2012 – the year her mother and younger brother, Anwar, also received a diagnosis.

The hospital, on the outskirts of Munich, has a Lyme Specialized Center which is focused on using whole body hyperthermia treatment to kill the bacteria – Borrelia burgdorferi – responsible for the tick-borne disease. The clinic claims to have ‘successfully treated more than 800 patients with chronic Lyme disease.’

The treatment slowly raises a patient’s body temperature to 107°F and then maintains it for two to three hours while they’re sedated. 

Bella is said to have had two rounds, one week apart, according to an insider, as well as two weeks of antibiotics, Chelation therapy (the process of removing heavy metals from the body) and multiple peptide infusions. Pictures shared by Yolanda and Bella also show her with what appears to be an apheresis catheter in her neck which is used for the removal of specific blood components.

Her stay at the clinic – which also offers laser therapy, detox footbaths, colon cleansing and controversial ozone therapy (the process of administering ozone gas ‘intravenous and/or rectally’) as a treatment for Lyme disease – was reportedly suggested by her mother, and would have cost upwards of $100,000.

‘Yolanda is a strict parent but it’s in her best interests,’ an insider told the Daily Mail. ‘Bella going to Germany was most likely Yolanda’s idea and her pushing her to go there for treatment and take time off from work to get better.

‘Yolanda’s very holistic. She and the Hadid’s have a lot of money so they’re open to experimenting and doing treatments in other countries that are not FDA approved. They go to these insanely expensive doctors, want the best treatment and are willing to pay whatever they need to get it, especially for Bella – Yolanda doesn’t want to see her suffer like she did.’

Yolanda, who raised her family on a ranch in Santa Barbara, California, before moving to Beverly Hills, shared nine pictures of her daughter undergoing multiple treatments, one of which showed Bella wrapped in what appear to be wet towels, while another showed the mother-daughter duo holding hands with matching cannulas.

‘You have fought through another month of treatment and I know god is good, miracles do happen everyday,’ she wrote. ‘I pray for your speedy recovery my love. This disease has brought us to our knees, but we always get back up. We will continue to fight for better days, together.’

But Yolanda has faced push back over claims she and two of her children (not her daughter Gigi Hadid) have chronic Lyme disease as it is not widely accepted as a recognized medical term.

In most cases, doctors argue, Lyme cannot stay active in the body for decades, despite what chronic Lyme patients claim.

In fact, research shows that patients who say they have chronic Lyme disease rarely ever test positive for the infection on blood tests.

And experts say extensive treatments offered to patients can put them at risk of deadly complications.

Take the whole body hyperthermia treatment which costs $90,000- $115,000 a week. The hospital website states concerning side effects can include a ‘range of cardiovascular problems, hypotension, tachycardia, arrhythmias’ as well as seizures in rare cases.

St George Hospital claims these have ‘only occurred in less than one percent of cases’ and they have reportedly carried out more than 18,000 procedures in the 20 years since Dr Friedrich R Douwes started researching the benefits as part of an integrative cancer treatment concept at the hospital in the late 1990s.

Ozone therapy, which Yolanda claims has helped her son Anwar, 26, has also proved controversial, with the FDA warning against it in 2019 over a lack of evidence to prove that it’s effective or safe. When it comes to Chelation therapy it is only FDA approved for treating heavy metal poisoning.

‘Chronic Lyme disease is not recognized or widely accepted by the medical establishment – it’s still very controversial,’ Professor Hany Elsheikha, chairman of interdisciplinary parasitology at the University of Nottingham told the Daily Mail.

‘It’s a condition that sits in a grey area. But because people are really desperate, misinformation spreads like wildfire.’

Generally for people claiming symptoms, it has been suggested that they could instead be due to an undiagnosed condition, such as a severe vitamin deficiency or mental illness.

It is a suspicion shared by our insider. ‘With Bella, there’s pressure to look a certain way in modeling, but at the same time her career can be hurting her,’ they said. ‘You’re more susceptible to getting sick because you’re tired from traveling all the time, not eating regular meals…’

The family’s ongoing battle also raised eyebrows among Yolanda’s former costars on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills – where it was suggested the reality star had Munchausen syndrome, a mental disorder in which someone falsely believes they are physically ill.

Yolanda’s health was a major storyline back in 2016, with Kyle Richards struggling to accept that multiple people in the same family could have Lyme disease, calling it ‘crazy’ a year after Yolanda received a Lyme disease awareness award.

Speaking to Yolanda, who had her silicone breast implants removed over fears they could be aggravating her condition, Kyle said: ‘So what, you were all bit by a tick? It’s so confusing. Three of you in one family?’

But when Lisa Rinna was accused of spreading the rumor that she might have Munchausen, an explosive row broke out. Yolanda denied the claim with others leaping to her defense.

The fall out was eye-opening for Yolanda, who now refrains from sharing information about her children’s health. ‘She does not talk about her daughters to her close housewife friends – she keeps their personal life private,’ said our insider.

‘Her daughters are her everything… She’s a very private person because she’s a very protective mother, just doing what’s best for them. She just wants her and her family to be healthy.’

While most patients with Lyme will recover after a course of antibiotics, lingering symptoms do occur for some – and are known as post treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). Experts say these symptoms tend to last for weeks or months.

Yolanda, who was diagnosed by a doctor in Belgium, has sought holistic treatments after claiming antibiotics failed her. She recalled using herbal enemas that allegedly expel parasites and undergoing stem cell therapy in a hotel basement in Tijuana in her 2017 book ‘Believe Me,’ which documented her search for a cure.  

She has essentially been the guinea pig for her children: ‘Whatever treatments I’ve tried that I thought benefited me just a little bit I’ve bought them on and tried the same with them.’

In August 2023, Bella revealed she had completed more than 100 days of treatment for chronic Lyme disease and co-infections, sharing a collection of images of herself with cannulas and hooked up to machines.

‘Thankful to my mommy for keeping all of my medical records, sticking by me, never leaving my side, protecting, supporting, but most of all, believing me through all of this,’ she wrote.

Our insider said Yolanda and Bella are ‘doing the right thing by sharing photos,’ adding: ‘Bella, especially, is in the spotlight all the time. She wouldn’t want the public to think she had disappeared for any other reason like drugs or rehab or plastic surgery.’

According to Lyme Action Network – one of many political groups in the US formed to increase awareness and raise funds for the condition – chronic Lyme can include symptoms as varied as rib soreness, change in bowel function, bladder dysfunction, menstrual irregularity, eye floaters, worse hangovers from alcohol and even getting lost.

Testing for the condition is another point of contention.

Chronic Lyme disease activists say that traditional tests are unreliable because they look for antibodies for the bacteria, rather than the bacteria itself.

As a result, the Lyme Action Network website states patients ‘MAY have the disease even if your Western Blot or ELISA blood tests return negative results.’

Michael R Scoma, an infectious disease physician based in NYC, said Bella needs a ‘solid diagnosis’ by ‘carefully ruling out other chronic conditions with similar symptoms, such as neurological tickborne diseases, long COVID, chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, or autoimmune disorders.’

Bella has previously disclosed her symptoms, which include difficulty walking, joint pain, nausea, headaches, sensitivity to light and noise and inflammation among others. She also suffered memory loss, claiming she would forget how to drive to Santa Monica from Malibu and had to be homeschooled during high school owing to the exhaustion. Her struggle with the disease cut short her burgeoning equestrian career and a shot at the Olympics.

‘Everyday I feel at least 10 of these attributes without fail… since I was probably 14, but more aggressively when I turned 18,’ she wrote on Instagram in 2020 alongside a diagram of the ways Lyme disease can affect people.

But it seems her stay at St George hospital has offered Bella a sense of hope, unlike some patients who claim to have seen zero results, or have been left feeling worse.

So happy was she with the treatment, she wanted to hire one of the nurses. ‘Bella was very lovely with the staff and actually wanted to bring one of the nurses home with her to the US and hire her as a personal nurse,’ a second insider added.

Days later she apologized to fans on Instagram for being ‘MIA’ as she returned to the runway at Paris Fashion Week, walking for Yves Saint Laurent. 

Asked if she will ever disclose how she is treating her condition, she told one fan: ‘I will soon – just gaining the energy.’