Since her Pretty Little Liars days, Sasha Pieterse has opened up about learning she had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). She first revealed the diagnosis while appearing on Dancing With the Stars in 2017.
“I’ve never really done that before. I’ve never really been on a show like this. I’ve never had that experience. Having partner Gleb [Savchenko] and everyone at Dancing with the Stars be so supportive of me and having that outlet means a lot,” the actress told Us Weekly at the time. “The fact that I can open up and share this with people and hopefully bring awareness to PCOS is really all I can ask for. This has been an amazing experience.”
PCOS is a hormonal disorder and, for Sasha, it caused her to gain 70 pounds while filming Pretty Little Liars. She played Alison DeLaurentis on the show, which aired from 2010 to 2017.
“Here’s the thing, I was exercising like crazy and was eating the best that I could before. This just heightens it,” Sasha told Us about competing on DWTS. “It’s a combination. It’s a combination of me finding out what I have, and then Dancing with the Stars helps me tremendously. Having Gleb as a partner. He’s amazing. But just the process in general — how hard we’re working and how healthy I feel. I really feel like myself again.”
Years after the initial diagnosis, Sasha recalled going to “over 15 gynecologists” before getting a proper diagnosis.
“It was the most frustrating experience and disheartening because no matter what I did, no matter how well I behaved, no matter how great I treated my body, things were actually getting worse rather than better. It was very very confusing,” she shared on“The Squeeze” podcast in August 2023. “So after a long process, someone recommended that I go to an endocrinologist.”
Her “health issues” were “documented on camera” because she was starring on the Freeform series.
“It was probably around 15 or 16 that I started noticing a difference in just my metabolism in general,” Sasha recalled. “At 17, I gained 70 pounds in the year, for no reason. There was no explanation for it.”
Scroll through our gallery to read Sasha’s most honest quotes about her health journey.
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