Before the latest health concern, Malik had been open about his struggles with severe pressure and anxiety.
In addition, he revealed in his 2016 autobiography he developed a “quite serious” eating disorder when he was with his former boy group.
“Something I’ve never talked about in public before, but which I have come to terms with since leaving the band, is that I was suffering from an eating disorder,” he wrote. “It wasn’t as though I had any concerns about my weight or anything like that. I’d just go for days – sometimes two or three days straight – without eating anything at all.”
Malik noted it “got quite serious,” although he reportedly “did not recognize it for what it was” at the time.
He also clarified he did not intentionally restrict his diet, adding, “I think it was about control. I didn’t feel like I had control over anything else in my life, but food was something I could control, so I did. I had lost so much weight I had become ill. The workload and the pace of life on the road, put together with the pressures and strains of everything going on within the band, had badly affected my eating habits.”