All Of Miley Cyrus' Health Problems Explained

The following article contains mentions of depression.

These days, though she continues to release music, Miley Cyrus doesn't perform much in public anymore. She opened up about why that was in a TikTok shared with fans back in 2023. "What people don't really understand about touring is the show is only 90 minutes, but that's your life," she said, explaining the toll that live performance takes on her body and her mind. "If you're performing at a certain level of intensity and excellence, there should be an equal amount of recovery and rest ... Having, every day, the relationship between you and other humans being subject and observer isn't healthy for me."

That said, Cyrus has never been one to shy away from sharing her life with her fans. From her child stardom on the Disney Channel to the songs she wrote about Liam Hemsworth, fans have been along for the ride throughout her career. Sometimes, that can be uncomfortably personal, such as when she wrote a psychedelic, goop-covered album about her dead pets. Other times, though, Cyrus has opened up about the health problems she's faced in the spotlight, allowing fans to follow her long journey to health. She's gone public with a health condition she's had since birth, shared details about some pretty scary accidents, and used more than one hospitalization as a quirky talk show anecdote. One health condition is even responsible for her iconic voice! These are all of Miley Cyrus' health problems, explained.

Miley Cyrus was born with a heart condition, but she didn't know it until she went out on the Best of Both Worlds Tour in 2007. That tour featured her performing songs as both her real-life persona and her "Hannah Montana" character, and it required an awful lot of physical exertion from the teenager. "I was in front of 100,000 people and my heart started going bananas," she recalled on a podcast called "Every Single Album" (via News18). She remembered everyone worrying that her blood sugar was low, but even though she was a child, she could tell it was more serious. "I was like, 'No, I'm telling you my heart is going at these different speeds and I can't control it. Something is wrong!'" she said.

Eventually, she was made to wear a heart monitor while on stage, and she received a diagnosis. "I had a heart murmur, a leaky valve, and I had tachycardia. And those moments were traumatizing," said Cyrus. A doctor told her she'd probably had the condition her whole life, but because she'd never been under that level of stress before, she never knew. Cyrus wrote about the condition in her 2008 memoir, "Miles to Go," where she explained, "The type of tachycardia I have isn't dangerous. It won't hurt me, but it does bother me. There is never a time onstage when I'm not thinking about my heart" (via TV Guide).

In 2012, a teenage Miley Cyrus was cooking dinner one night when she ran afoul of a kitchen appliance. The incident led to paparazzi photos of the "Wrecking Ball" singer rushing to an emergency room, bandages clutched around a bleeding finger. Cyrus had quite the entourage surrounding her on the way to the hospital, including her mother Tish Cyrus, her grandmother, and her then-boyfriend Liam Hemsworth.

Thankfully, things didn't seem super serious, though her fans were understandably freaked out by the photos. A representative spoke with E! News, confirming to the outlet, "[She] had to get a few stitches. She's doing fine." Cyrus herself took to X to reassure her Smilers that there was nothing to worry about. Replying to a fan account that had posted the frightening photos, the "Bolt" star wrote, "I'm all stitched up & have on a splint, so I'm good. As you can tell by my expression, didn't feel so good. Curse u, blender!"

In 2012, Miley Cyrus faced criticism from the public about her weight. Fans and critics alike fretted that she was battling an eating disorder, but Cyrus took to X to insist that this wasn't the case. "For everyone calling me anorexic, I have a gluten and lactose allergy," she wrote. "It's not about weight, it's about health. Gluten is crapppp anyway!"

The tweet touched off a bout of discourse surrounding gluten-free diets, with people lining up to comment on whether Cyrus' health condition was legitimate or simply a health food fad. "Gluten-free diets are really only prescribed by a doctor for people who have celiac disease," said gastroenterologist Dr. Roshini Rajapaksa to CBS News when asked about gluten allergies. "It's the only treatment."

Cyrus didn't just claim the condition for herself; she suggested via X that everyone should give the gluten-free diet a shot, writing, "Everyone should try no gluten for a week! The change in your skin, physical, and mental health is amazing! U won't go back!" She would tout the benefits several more times in the ensuing years, taking to X once again in 2013 to write, "Gluten is poisoning me. Your stomach has a brain too & it hates s*** food." If you're curious about following the "We Can't Stop" singer's advice and cutting out gluten for yourself, here's what really happens to your body when you go gluten-free.

After "Hannah Montana" ended and Miley Cyrus made moves to break away from her family-friendly image, she entered her "Bangerz" era, which changed everything. She cut her hair, twerked onstage at the VMAs with Robin Thicke, and started sticking her tongue out everywhere she went. While she joked on "Saturday Night Live" that the tongue thing was because she "kept having mini-strokes" – angering advocacy groups — that wasn't actually true (via The Independent). Around that time, however, she worried fans by checking in and out of the hospital for extended periods of time, sparking concern for her health. 

Fans worried that she was getting into drugs, but Cyrus insisted that she'd actually experienced an adverse reaction to some medication. Cyrus revealed on a 2014 episode of "On Air with Ryan Seacrest" that she'd taken medication in the same class as penicillin to get over a cold, and it just never went away. "On the sixth day, I just woke up and it was ... so scary," she said (via CBS News). "I had basically been poisoning myself for a week with something I didn't know I was really scary allergic to."

Although she had to cancel multiple tour dates, things resumed with a press conference in London, where she again denied overdosing. She also insisted that she'd fully recovered. "You have no idea how ready I am," she said (via E! News). "There is nothing I would rather not do than lay in a bed for two weeks. It was the most miserable two weeks of my life."

In 2019, Miley Cyrus revealed on her Instagram Stories that she'd been managing symptoms of tonsillitis. "Tonsillitis is a f***ing f***!" she wrote over of one sickly selfie (via the Daily Mail). "This f***ing blows." The next day, she shared a series of snaps from a hospital bed, trying to remain chipper for her fans even as she struggled with the condition, which is caused by an inflammation of the tonsils and often requires having them taken out entirely. Tonsillitis leads to a sore throat, a croaky voice, and it could also be the reason why you have bad breath.

Posing in a hospital mirror with her mother, Tish Cyrus, the "Midnight Sky" singer wrote, "How you present yourself can determine how you feel!" She revealed that she'd refashioned her hospital gown with her mom's help, adding, "Thank you mama for helpin this little sickyyy look a little bit better by brushin my hair for me." Her tonsillitis got so bad that Cyrus did, indeed, need surgery to fix the problem. Sources told People that her recovery would include weeks of vocal rest, revealing that the "Party Up The Street" singer had basically cleared her calendar of performing and recording duties. "[She's] doing great and will be back and better than ever early next year," the source said. Furthermore, sources said that Cyrus' tonsil surgery had revealed an unrelated issue on her vocal cords. It would be several years before Cyrus went public with details about this other condition.

As 2022 turned into 2023, Miley Cyrus hosted a television special called "Miley's New Year's Eve Party." She'd performed the previous year alongside Pete Davidson as co-host and hosted with her godmother, Dolly Parton, at the 2022/2023 celebration. Cyrus and Parton share a heartwarming relationship, which likely made it difficult to hear that her goddaughter had experienced a frightening health incident on stage. Despite being in tremendous pain, however, Cyrus had powered through the performance. "I had a pretty traumatic experience," she later told Apple Music's Zane Lowe. "I had [an] ovarian cyst rupture, which, we didn't know exactly what was going on ... it was extremely excruciating, and I did the show anyway."

The "Miley's New Year's Eve Party" specials were produced by "Saturday Night Live" executive Lorne Michaels, who sat Cyrus down and offered her some advice about going on with the show. She'd had a pretty tough year as it was, and Michaels warned her that it was time to pick herself back up, even though she was in an altogether new kind of pain. "He goes, 'Six months. Everybody has six months to feel sorry for themselves, and then we start to rebuild,'" Cyrus recalled. "I was expired on my amount of time that I was able to shut down."

Cysts could be the reason why the right side of your abdomen hurts, or they may even go undetected until there's a major problem. Ovarian cysts are common, but when they rupture, they can cause intense pain and sometimes require medical intervention. Unlike Cyrus, powering through is not recommended. Instead, consult a doctor if you experience similar symptoms.

In 2025, during the promotional cycle for her album "Something Beautiful," Miley Cyrus finally revealed what's up with her vocal cords. After all, the singer has one of the most instantly recognizable voices in all of pop, a characteristic rasp that she's been able to mold into some stellar vocal performances as she's grown older. That sound, it turns out, is due to a condition known as Reinke's edema.

For a while, fans theorized that Cyrus was abusing her voice, and she told Apple Music's Zane Lowe that there was some truth to that. "Being 21 and staying up and drinking and smoking and partying after every show does not help," she said. "But also, in my case, it does not cause it." Instead, she's had the edema her whole life. "It's a part of my, you know, unique anatomy ... I have this very large, you know, polyp on my vocal cord, which has given me a lot of the tone and the texture that has made me who I am," she said.

Cyrus likened the condition to running a marathon while wearing ankle weights, noting that it does make performing more difficult. Still, she doesn't necessarily want to have it surgically corrected, because it's given her voice the character that it has. "I'm not willing to sever it," she said, "because the chance of waking up from a surgery and not sounding like myself is a probability."

On her 2025 album "Something Beautiful," Miley Cyrus included a song called "Walk of Fame," which featured the vocals of Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard. The song is about feeling famous no matter where you go, to the point that it interferes with your ability to process your emotions. "Every time I walk, it's a walk of fame," Cyrus sings mournfully. When it came time to shoot the music video, Cyrus decided that she wanted to stomp the famous sidewalk in Hollywood that gave the song its name. 

The actual Walk of Fame isn't the cleanest place in Los Angeles, to say the least, and it appears that filming down on the ground led Cyrus to develop some sort of infection. "I caught something," she revealed in an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live." She added that a month after she shot the video, she was checked into the intensive care unit (ICU) to deal with her leg. "My leg began to disintegrate within some way around the kneecap area," she said. The doctor asked how she might have developed it, and Cyrus had to confess that she caught it rolling around on the sidewalks of Hollywood. "To have a surgeon look at you and say, 'Yuck' ... They open up cadavers, they see inside the guts of humans, and they're looking at me, telling me I'm disgusting," she joked. Thankfully, disgusted or not, the doctors were able to help, and Cyrus' knee made a full recovery.

Over the course of two decades in the spotlight, Miley Cyrus has remained candid about a number of conditions that have affected her physical health. With that in mind, it's also important to remember that mental health is a crucial component of your overall well-being, too! To that end, Cyrus has also been transparent with her fans about her experience with depression.

"I went through a time where I was really depressed," she told Elle in 2014. "Like, I locked myself in my room and my dad had to break my door down." Cyrus revealed that she's taken antidepressants, insisting that it's okay to ask for help. Furthermore, she pointed out that there's quite a difference between feeling sad or stressed and being depressed in the clinical sense. "So many people look at [my depression] as me being ungrateful, but that is not it," she said. "I can't help it."

That same year, she launched the Happy Hippie Foundation. While the charity primarily focuses on issues related to homelessness among LGBTQ+ youth, they've also partnered with other groups on a number of initiatives meant to raise awareness about mental health. In 2022, for example, they partnered with a group that runs a mental health app. Cyrus said in a press release, "I'm so excited that Happy Hippie is partnering with Dr. Amen's Change Your Brain, Change Your Life Foundation. I know firsthand how impactful Dr. Amen's work is, and I can't wait to see the ways that these resources change lives."

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.