“I’m glad I trusted my body and listened to my gut and will continue advocating for others to do so,” Reinhart says.

Lili Reinhart reveals endometriosis diagnosis: ‘Extremely misunderstood disease’

"I'm glad I trusted my body and listened to my gut and will continue advocating for others to do so," Reinhart says.

By Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum

Sydney Bucksbaum is a staff writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2019 and is a published author. Her work has previously appeared in *TV Guide Magazine*, E! News/E! Online, *The Hollywood Reporter*, Mashable, Bustle, IGN, DCComics.com, Inverse, *The Daily Northwestern*, and more.

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December 11, 2025 3:28 p.m. ET

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Lili Reinhart shares endometriosis diagnosis. Credit:

Lili Reinhart/Instagram

Lili Reinhart is sharing her recent medical diagnosis in the hopes that it helps other women.

The *Riverdale* alum revealed on her Instagram on Thursday that she has been diagnosed with endometriosis after getting laparoscopic surgery. But her path to getting an official diagnosis was anything but easy, which is why she's raising awareness about the "extremely misunderstood disease" that impacts a large amount of people.

"Last year, I saw a urogynecologist and was diagnosed with interstitial cystitis. I was told there was no cure — and no lasting relief — for my symptoms," Reinhart wrote on Instagram along with several photos of her in the hospital. "Three hospital visits. Multiple urologists and gynecologists. And not one of them seriously considered endometriosis as the underlying cause of what I was experiencing."

Reinhart revealed that she continued to advocate for herself and seek out the real issue for her pain, and "it wasn’t until I worked with two different pelvic floor therapists that the word endometriosis was even mentioned to me as a possible source of my pain."

Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty

She continued, "I pushed for an MRI on my own, which led to a diagnosis of adenomyosis. From there, I met with an endometriosis specialist who helped me decide that laparoscopic surgery was the next step I wanted to take — while, at the same time, another gynecologist told me I 'probably didn’t have endo' and should just go on the pill."

The actor — who starred as Betty Cooper for seven seasons on the CW series — hopes that sharing her story will help others who are struggling with the same disease but don't have the correct diagnosis.

"I’m glad I trusted my body and listened to my gut and will continue advocating for others to do so," she said. "Endometriosis is an extremely misunderstood disease, leaving often a 4-11 year gap between symptoms and a definitive surgical diagnosis. It’s estimated 1 in 10 people with uteruses have endo according to the World Health Organization."

Reinhart's last photo in the Instagram carousel is a powerful, handwritten message supporting @endofund: "Believing women's pain shouldn't be revolutionary."

See Reinhart's full message below:

Reinhart previously opened up about her initial interstitial cystitis diagnosis — a condition that involves an inflamed or irritated bladder wall, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine — in January, after many health struggles that ultimately came to a head the year prior in Germany, where she was filming her thriller* American Sweatshop.*

"The third night I'm there, I developed symptoms of a UTI," Reinhart said. "I'm like, 'I've had UTIs before. I'm a woman. We all know how it feels.'" At the hospital, doctors performed a urinalysis and discovered a "slight infection," sending Reinhart home with antibiotics. But the urgency to pee did not subside, leading to two more hospital visits under the assumption it was a UTI.

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"The second I'm done peeing, I still feel like I have to pee, but my pee is showing up with no infection," she said. When she returned to Los Angeles, she continued to seek out specialists, and it was in October 2024 that Reinhart received her diagnosis. "No tumors, no cysts, just a lot of inflammation," she said.

The actress began undergoing weekly bladder instillations, where a doctor inserts a medicine-filled catheter into her urethra to help relax pelvic and bladder muscles for symptoms treatment. "No one ever knows what that is when I talk about it," Reinhart said. "But my urogyno is telling me so many women have this, and that's why I think it's as important as it is to just be like, 'Hey, I'm dealing with it too.'"

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Reinhart, also a vocal mental health advocate, had previously shared her other health issues in 2022, including unexplained gut issues and weight gain. She was tested for Celiac disease and Crohn's disease before landing on the interstitial cystitis diagnosis, and even developed an eating disorder and experienced hair loss during that time. She called 2024 "the hardest year of my life" that taught her to advocate for her own health, no matter what she was being told by healthcare professionals.

"Listen to your body, and don't take no for an answer," she said. "Don't let a doctor tell you that nothing's wrong when you know that there is."**

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