Venus Williams withdrew from the 2011 US Open after being diagnosed with Sjogren’s syndrome, an autoimmune disease that can involve fatigue, joint pain, and dryness. She later returned to professional competition and continued playing for years.
Williams has publicly described changing her diet after the diagnosis. Her account is relevant to her own experience, but it should not be converted into a claim that one dietary change kept her career going or can treat the disease in other people.
This article is for general information and does not provide medical or mental-health advice.
What Williams has said
In a 2012 interview reported by CBS News, Williams said she had made major improvements and that changing her diet had made a big difference for her. The WTA’s player profile also notes that she adopted a vegan and raw-food diet after her diagnosis to help manage inflammation and symptoms.
Those are statements about one athlete’s management of a chronic condition. They do not establish which part of her improvement came from diet, medical care, training changes, scheduling, natural variation, or other factors.
A personal account is not a treatment study
Sjogren’s can affect people differently, and diet is not a substitute for diagnosis or individual medical care. Williams has not presented her experience as proof of a cure.
The defensible account is that she changed several parts of her routine after diagnosis, believed diet helped her symptoms, and continued competing. A causal claim that the diet extended her career by a decade goes beyond the available evidence.
Editor’s note: This article was substantially revised on September 14, 2026, to present Williams’s comments as personal experience rather than a clinical or causal claim.
