Adele gave fans an update on her health this weekend after she appeared to be moving at a slower pace than usual during one of her shows in Las Vegas.
By all accounts, the 15-time Grammy winner was in high spirits when she took the stage on New Year’s Saturday as part of her “Weekends with Adele” residency. In a short video obtained by the Daily Star, however, he admitted to having a slight mobility problem as he handed out t-shirts to lucky viewers.
“I have two more. I just have to get to the other side of the stage,” she said, as seen in the clip. “I have to travel these days because I have really bad sciatica.”
As Johns Hopkins Medicine explains, sciatica is “pain that originates along the sciatic nerve,” which extends from the back of the pelvis to the back of the thigh. Symptoms include a constant burning sensation and/or shooting pain originating in the lower back.
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This is not the first time that Adele has hinted at back problems.
“I’ve had back pain for almost half my life, really,” she told The Face in 2021. “It usually flares up because of stress or bad posture. But where I’ve built strong abs down there that I’ve never had before, my back doesn’t play as much anymore. It means I can do more, I can run around a little bit more with my baby.”
Elsewhere in that interview, Adele said: “I dropped my first record when I was 15 because of a sneeze. I was in bed and I sneezed and my fifth flew. In January, I lost my sixth, L6. And then, where I had a c-section, my core was useless.”
Health concerns aside, Adele received near-universal praise from critics and fans alike for “Weekends with Adele,” which opened in November after a last-minute delay that lasted nearly 10 months. Billboard called the performance “absolutely breathless and spectacular,” while the Los Angeles Times praised the pop diva for striking “a fine balance between personal storytelling and Vegas glitz” with her performance.
