Bella Hadid Gives Up On Olympic Dream Amid Struggle With Lyme Disease

Bella Hadid has been riding since the age of three and is placed in the national ranking and had been training for the 2016 Olympics, however in a sad blog post, her mother revealed that she has given up on her dream due to her struggle with Lyme disease.

Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills star Yolanda Foster, 52, has openly talked about the health battles her daughter Bella Hadid, 19, and son, Anwar Hadid, 16, have fought and even posted photos of the medication they’re taking on Instagram.

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However now she's made the very sad confession that Bella will no longer be training for the Olympics, as she continues to fight the crippling disease.

In a new blog post, titled I Have Nothing to Prove, Foster wrote: “Bella and Anwar were diagnosed at the end of 2013 and have been in extensive holistic treatment ever since.

"It’s very common for multiple family members to be affected by Lyme disease.

"The children and I lived on a horse ranch in Santa Barbara for 10 years and spent the majority of our time outside in nature.

“Bella had to give up her lifelong dream of having a professional riding career and a shot at the Olympics due to her severe symptoms and inability to ride.

"This was the biggest heartbreak of her life and an extremely sensitive subject for her.

"She is resilient and focused on a new direction—she’s made a name for herself in the modeling industry while she struggles with symptoms of chronic Lyme every day.”

Bella is hoping to give her Olympic dream another shot in 2020, her health permitting.

On Tuesday, Foster posted a photo on Instagram from 2015 that shows Bella lying in bed with an IV in her arm. “Watching my brave babies suffer in silence in order to support me in my journey has struck the deepest core of hopelessness inside of me,” Foster captioned the photo.

“It is because of them that I continue to fight relentlessly. … I will not allow them to live a life of pain and suffering. … I will prevail and walk to the end of the earth to find a cure for them and millions of others debilitated by this invisible disease!!!! We all deserve to live a healthy life, don’t you think?”

Lyme disease is a tick-borne illness caused by the bacterium Borrelia burgdorferi. Approximately 30,000 new cases of the disease are reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention each year.

But the disease isn’t contagious, and Foster’s children didn’t inherit Lyme disease from their mother. So how did Bella and Anwar end up with the disease too?

Rick Watkins, MD, an infectious disease specialist at Cleveland Clinic Akron General Medical Center, tells Yahoo Health that they simply could have had the same exposure to the ticks that cause Lyme disease. Foster’s family’s situation is “rare,” says Watkins, but it does happen. For example, a family may go camping together and be exposed to Lyme-infected ticks or live on a wooded property where the ticks reside.

But aside from environmental factors, certain families are not prone to developing Lyme disease. “As far as we know, there is no genetic predisposition,” Watkins says. “Anyone could get it.”

Unfortunately, Bella’s youth isn’t a factor in her ability to fight the disease. According to Watkins, younger people can contract Lyme disease and suffer just as much as older people.

As for the IV in Bella’s arm, Watkins says it’s an indicator that her Lyme disease is affecting her central nervous system. “It usually means the patient has had Lyme disease longer,” he says.