Brooke Shields highlighted the stark differences in how men and women are treated by doctors during her appearance on Good Morning America on Monday, January 13. The model and actress discussed her motivation for addressing women’s experiences in the healthcare system in her new book, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old.

“Women go through stuff. We need to be able to say, ‘This isn’t fair.’ We need to be able to self-advocate,” she said.

“I had a seizure not too long ago and the two male doctors said, ‘Are you restricting yourself for dietary reasons?’ And I was like, ‘No. I’m a 59-year-old woman who looks younger bloated. Give me some potato chips!’ You wouldn’t say that to a man.” 

“And that’s not what the book is, it’s not reducing it to male, female — we love the men in our lives,” she continued. “But it’s time to kind of explore this without yelling, without being angry. I tell my girls… we don’t have to yell louder. We just have to be secure in what we believe and to be heard, because we’re not going to get anywhere by just screaming.”

In her book, Brooke Shields opens up about aging and taking ownership of her body, even recounting a moment when she realized she had undergone a medical procedure without her consent.

Shields first shared details about her health scare in her Glamour 2023 Women of the Year cover story. She revealed that the seizure happened just before a performance of her one-woman show, “Previously Owned by Brooke Shields.”

“I was preparing for the show, and I was drinking so much water, and I didn’t know I was low in sodium,” she said. “I was waiting for an Uber. I get down to the bottom of the steps, and I start evidently looking weird, and the people I was with were like, ‘Are you OK?’ ”

“I go to the sommelier who had just taken an hour to watch my run-through… Everything starts to go black. Then my hands drop to my side and I go headfirst into the wall,” Brooke said.

“The next thing I remember, I’m being loaded into an ambulance. I have oxygen on. And Bradley f—ing Cooper is sitting next to me holding my hand,” she said.

In the end, the cause of Brooke’s seizure was from “low sodium” because she drank a too much water. This created a situation where there was too little sodium in her blood and urine which can cause a seizure.