Actress Lauren Miller Rogen has revealed that a brain aneurysm she had monitored for years grew rapidly in 2022, leading her to have it removed.
Miller Rogen — who married Hollywood power player Seth Rogen in 2011 and is 42 years old — was a guest speaker at the UCLA Department of Neurosurgery Visionary Ball in Beverly Hills on Oct. 11 where she spoke about her family history of brain health issues and the discovery of a small aneurysm that suddenly began growing into a potential threat to her own life, People magazine reported.
The actress — who first appeared in the 2007 hit comedy Superbad, which launched Jonah Hill’s career and established Seth Rogen as a winning writer-producer — told those assembled that both her mother and grandmother suffered from dementia before their passing, and she ultimately decided to do a full MRI five years ago — just in case.
She made the decision “to take a deeper look at anything that could possibly be lurking inside me that would affect my longevity,” Miller Rogen said on Wednesday.
It turned out, she had a small aneurysm developing in her brain that doctors felt should be closely monitored.
“They found, of course, this sort of aneurysm in my head,” Miller Rogen revealed. “So of course, this was terrifying information and made me think of my great-grandmother, whose fate I certainly didn’t want to mimic.”
She said that five years ago, it was just something to keep an eye on. However, “It remained small — until it didn’t,” she recounted.
In spring 2022, her doctors noticed the aneurysm started growing — after four years of keeping tabs on it — and while it wasn’t life-threatening exactly yet, it was big enough that her medical team felt it should be dealt with utilizing a surgical solution.
Rogen praised the team at UCLA and UCLA neurosurgeon Dr. Geoffrey Colby, who “answered every single question” and led the effort to remove the threat.
“I’m truly endlessly grateful to Dr. Colby, his entire team, and the entire staff at UCLA who guided us through this scary experience that I’m truly grateful to have overcome,” Rogen said. “I’m truly thankful that I won’t be dying at this dinner table or any others anytime soon.”
Early this year, Seth and Lauren had told People that humor was an extremely important coping mechanism to deal with the knowledge that Alzheimer’s and dementia runs in her family.
“I’m lucky I live with a very funny person,” Lauren told the magazine. “And as mom said back then, I’m funny sometimes too. For us, comedy is just sort of around and is absolutely part of how we cope with things naturally, whether we’re aware of it or not.”
She added that people with similar genetic propensities should try to map out preventative care well ahead of time.
“Don’t be afraid to deep dive into that,” she told the magazine. “Because there are things that you can do to modify your genetics and to make lifestyle changes and live a brain-healthy life and potentially either delay or even maybe even prevent dementia or Alzheimer’s.”
“The one thing that I urge people is to talk to their doctors about their genetics and understand what it is that is inside of them that is going to affect their brains as they age, and not be afraid of that information,” she said.
“We should be talking about caring for our brains, and it shouldn’t be scary.”
Rogen was driven to seek preventative care after her mother developed Alzheimer’s disease at the young age of 55. And since Lauren and Seth have no children — and have proudly claimed that they never want to — to care for them in their old age, preventative care is an important focus for the couple.
It all left Lauren with a warning to others: “know yourself, know your numbers, know your genetic risk factors.”
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