Padma Lakshmi’s Health Struggles: Her Endometriosis, 7-Inch Scar & More

Padma Lakshmi is back with her new series America’s Culinary Cup, which premieres on March 4. Nearly three years after her departure from Top Chef, she’s returning to host another cooking competition.

The Emmy winner has put her life in the public eye since she first started hosting Top Chef in 2006, which is the same year she received a life-changing medical diagnosis. She has also faced other health struggles over the years.

Scroll down to learn more about Lakshmi’s health issues.

What condition does Padma Lakshmi have?

Lakshmi was diagnosed with endometriosis when she was 36 years old in 2006. According to Mayo Clinic, endometriosis is “an often-painful condition in which tissue that is similar to the inner lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus.”

It took more than 20 years for Lakshmi to receive a diagnosis for the painful menstrual cramps she suffered from beginning when she was 13 years old, and she has become an advocate for endometriosis awareness. In 2009, she co-founded the Endometriosis Foundation of America. The nonprofit seeks to “increase disease recognition, provide advocacy, facilitate expert surgical training, and fund landmark endometriosis research,” per its website.

Lakshmi has been open about her diagnosis and the pain she was in before learning what was wrong. “I can’t tell you how many jobs I had to cancel because I was completely bedridden,” she once said. “Sometimes, I would spend four days in bed.”

Dr. Tamer Seckin finally diagnosed the celebrity chef and performed a laparoscopic excision surgery, which removed the tissue from outside Lakshmi’s uterus and took four hours. It was the first of several surgeries she’s had, but the procedures have made her a “different person,” she confirmed. “These days, I rarely feel the pain from endometriosis that I felt monthly from the age of 13 to 36,” Lakshmi wrote in a 2024 Instagram post.

How did Padma Lakshmi get her scar?

Throughout her entire career, Lakshmi has had a massive, seven-inch scar on her right arm. The injury is quite prominent and stems from a car accident she was in as a teenager.

Lakshmi was just 14 years old when she, her mother, and her stepfather were driving in Malibu in a Ford Mercury, which had a bench seat in the front. The then-adolescent was “wedged in between” her mom and stepdad for the ride, she recalled.

Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images

“We were flying, and then we were airborne,” Lakshmi remembered. “And then, what stopped our fall was this tree, and then we went down further down this embankment, and then finally came to a last thud, and there was just stillness.”

The jaws of life were used to get the family out of the vehicle, and Lakshmi was taken to a different hospital than her parents. “Because we were pinned so tight, my arm had flown across my mother’s chest, and so my arm was just shattered in many pieces,” she shared. Ultimately, she needed surgery on the arm, which resulted in the scar.

Lakshmi also fractured her hip in the crash, and her stepfather broke his leg in four places. Her mother had the worst of the injuries, though, and was forced to have a hospital bed at home for months afterwards.

What was Padma Lakshmi diagnosed with as a teenager?

The aforementioned car accident happened just days after Lakshmi was released from the hospital for a different ailment.

“I got really sick, and no one could figure out what was wrong with me. I was very ill,” she said. Her mother eventually took her to the hospital, but it wasn’t for “days and days later” that she was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome.

Per the Mayo Clinic, Stevens-Johnson syndrome is a “rare, serious disorder of the skin and mucous membranes. It’s usually a reaction to medication that starts with flu-like symptoms, followed by a painful rash that spreads and blisters.”

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Once the diagnosis is made, it’s treatable by “removing the cause, caring for wounds, controlling pain, and minimizing complications as skin regrows,” but this can often take months. Lakshmi was in the hospital for weeks and said she was “blind and mute, as well as being fed by tubes and having to sleep sitting up, so that I wouldn’t choke on my own saliva.”

America’s Culinary Cup, Series Premiere, Wednesday, March 4, 9:30/8:30c, CBS