Eric Bischoff says he almost died twice due to not following health supplement instructions

File this one along with Colt Cabana’s compression socks story... on the latest episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, Eric Bischoff shared about a severe health crisis he recently went through that he believes was due to not following the instructions on a fiber supplement.

The 67 year old WWE Hall of Famer said he decided to add psyllium husks to his diet because he’d heard helped with hypoglycemia:

“I’m hypoglycemic, meaning if I have a candy bar, I’ll pass out.

“I’m reading about all this stuff and one of the things I read was using a supplement like Metamucil or, in this case, I used...psyllium husks. So, I’m thinking I’m going to add these psyllium husks to my repertoire.”

Bischoff applied the “if one of something is good, more of it must be better” philosophy when using the supplement in his smoothie, and didn’t read all of the directions on the product:

“I’m looking at the directions and it says ‘Recommended one to three tablespoons.’ And I’m going, ‘Well, that’s for the average person.’ Since I spent 30 years in the wrestling business, I know that if one to three is good for the average person that I need a minimum of four to five, because that’s how that works. That’s where I stopped, I didn’t read the rest of the directions, especially the important part that said, ‘Don’t start out with a maximum dose right away, work your way up to it.’”

He quickly noticed blood in his bowel movements (“I’m passing buckets of blood, like lots of it”) but didn’t notice other symptoms. That was why he didn’t mention anything to his wife. But after night of sleep, Bischoff noticed his blood pressure was low and told he needed to go to the hospital. He says he blacked out twice waiting for the ambulance.

They weren’t able to determine what his issue was at the hospital, and he was sent home as it appeared the bleeding had stopped. Two days later he noticed blood again. After he passed out, it was back to the hospital for two days in the ICU. Doctors still couldn’t figure out where the blood was coming from, and started discussing options like removing sections of his intestines that could lead to the former WCW president needing a colostomy bag.

A procedure was started and stopped due to how much Bischoff was bleeding, and he had to be taken by helicopter to a facility in a bigger city:

“I had used up all of the blood they had at the hospital or in the county where I live in. So, they put me in a helicopter and life-flighted me up to Billings, Montana because they had better equipment and experienced surgeons up there and all that kind of stuff.“

He spent another day or two in the ICU in Billings, then the bleeding stopped again. His medical team was still struggling for a diagnosis, but Easy E told them he knew what happened:

“It was a complete mystery. And I’m thinking, “It’s not a mystery, I know exactly what happened. I took those three big heaping tablespoons of psyllium.’

“The lining of your intestines are so vascular that it heals very, very quickly so over the course of 24 hours, whatever I tore up healed and now with all the tests they had, they couldn’t tell me what was wrong with me. But I knew, I told the doctor, I said, ‘I’m pretty sure’ because it was the only thing that I did differently.

“The doctor did tell me, he said, ‘You almost died twice, you almost died in Cody and you almost died here.’”

Fortunately, he seems to be fine now, even noting that he went out for sushi immediately after being discharged. Bischoff’s left the ordeal with a piece of advice for us all:

“The moral of the story is just read the fucking directions.”