Bristol Palin Gives Update on Year-Long Struggle With Rare Facial Paralysis
Plus, she revealed her next treatment plan.
Getty Images/Instagram/Bristol Palin
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In January 2025, Bristol Palin revealed she had facial paralysis. One year later, the 35-year-old daughter of former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin posted an update on her condition.
“Today’s day 323 of my face being paralyzed,” Palin says in the video, on January 3, 2026, in response to a fan-submitted question.
“How’s your face? Updates? Progress?” the fan wrote to Palin on Instagram during a Q&A.
Palin is blunt in her answer: “Not looking great,” she says to her 540,000 Instagram followers, speaking to the camera from her car. She then joked that things “could be worse, could be better. At least I’ve got cute sunglasses.”
Bristol Palin responds to a fan's question about the status of her facial paralysis during an "Ask Me Anything" on Instagram.
Instagram/Bristol Palin
(While Palin posted the video this week, it features a “December 9, 2025″ timestamp, indicating Palin filmed it one month before she put it online.)
Palin previously revealed that she woke up with a “weird little sensation in [her] face,” after which she completely lost the ability to move the left side of her face. Doctors suspected Bell’s palsy, a condition that can make the muscles of one side of the face temporarily weaken, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Typically, Bell’s palsy improves within six months, but Palin’s latest Instagram story update indicates that has not been the case for her.
Bristol Palin during a "Good Morning America" appearance in 2018.
Lorenzo Bevilaqua/Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
Palin insists she has tried “everything imaginable” to resolve the condition, from steroids to acupuncture. In the video, she reveals the next treatment tactic she plans to pursue.
“I will eventually get Botox in it,” Palin says, pointing to her left eye. “It just gets so small when I smile, or when I’m expressive at all.”
Bristol Palin responds to a fan's question about the status of her facial paralysis during an "Ask Me Anything" on Instagram.
This is not the first time Palin, the second eldest child of politician Sarah Palin, has been in the spotlight. She previously appeared on the MTV reality show Teen Mom OG after giving birth to her first child at 17. Later, she competed on Dancing With the Stars in 2010, coming third in the competition, and again in 2012, where she was eliminated in the fourth week.
Since her dancing days, the mother of three’s career has taken a very different path, and she now works as a real estate agent in Texas. However, Palin maintains a significant social media following and continues to update followers on her experiences with motherhood, her plastic surgery procedures, and her home-improvement projects.