NEW YORK, NEW YORK - APRIL 16: Adam Richman attends the Food Bank For New York City Can-Do Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on April 16, 2019 in New York City. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
Man vs. Food’s Adam Richman was almost killed by his mustache after he contracted a facial hair follicle infection, the famous foodie revealed during a podcast this week.
Richman, 47, said that he noticed a pimple-like growth in the area before realizing that something was decidedly wrong during a Michelin Event in Zurich in 2018.
His top lip ended up swelling “like a banana,” he told podcast Celebrity Catch Up: Life After That Thing I Did.
“One of my mustache follicles just looked like a pimple and it was just not healing well,” he said. “I’d gone to a doctor and then eventually my lip inflated like a banana – it was grotesque. I remember I went to tear a piece of medical tape and I couldn’t get to my teeth.”
The former Food Network star needed to be quarantined, and eventually needed surgery and “serious courses of antibiotics” to fully rid himself of the infection, he told the podcast.
His doctor told him that such infections can often “go intracranial,” or into the skull.
“I found out from maxillofacial surgeons that the area from the inside of your eyes to the outer corner of your lips, they call it the ‘danger triangle’ because there’s multiple opportunities for a surface infection to go intracranial.”
The infection, known as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), is a type of bacteria – commonly associated with hospitals – that is resistant to several widely-used antibiotics, which can make it particularly hard to treat.
Roughly 30 percent of people carry the Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, typically in their nose, groin, armpits or buttocks, and usually without even realizing it.
It invades the body’s bloodstream before releasing poisonous toxins that kill up to one-fifth of infected patients.
Richman added that he did not know how he contracted the infection, however his doctor said it could have been from anything from a water glass, hotel towel, to touching someone’s hand.
“The doctor said it could have been anything from a water glass to a hotel towel, shaking someone’s hand and then invariably [touching my face]. There’s any number of ways.”
The Brooklyn native, who hosted Man v. Food from 2008 to 2012, began to take his health more seriously after retiring from the show, and quickly lost 60 pounds for his efforts.
In 2014, The Guardian reported that Richman was unceremoniously taken off the air from another Food Network show “Man Finds Food,” after going on a tirade against haters on social media.
