Salman Khan suffered for years due to trigeminal neuralgia, recalls 8-hour surgery: 'Wouldn't wish on enemies'

Salman Khan is often considered Bollywood royalty, a box-office titan with a life that seems all glitz, glamour, and adoration. But even superstars have their battles — and Khan's recent revelation proves that pain doesn’t discriminate. In a chat on Two Much with Kajol and Twinkle, the superstar opened up about a torturous seven-and-a-half-year ordeal with trigeminal neuralgia, a condition he calls “the suicidal disease.”

“When I had trigeminal neuralgia, that pain used to be… You would not want your biggest enemy to have that pain. And I had it for seven and a half years,” Salman said, recalling how the agony forced him to writhe daily.

The pain wasn’t just intense — it was relentless.

“And this used to happen every four-five minutes. It used to take me an hour and a half to have my breakfast and I used to go straight to dinner. For an omelette, it used to take me… because I couldn’t… so I used to force myself (to eat),” he shared, noting that even painkillers couldn’t touch it.

Doctors initially suspected a dental issue, but the culprit turned out to be his nerves. Khan traced the first shock of pain back to the set of his 2007 film Partner, after Lara dutifully pushed a strand of hair out of his face.

“I said, ‘Wow Lara, electrifying!’ That is when it started,” he laughed.

The condition, he says, has a grim nickname for a reason:

“It is the worst pain. It is called ‘the suicidal disease’. Maximum number of suicides happen because of this disease.”

Aamir Khan chimed in: “Because you can’t handle the pain.”

Khan wanted to share his story to raise awareness, noting how little people knew about trigeminal neuralgia, despite how common it actually is. Fortunately, modern medicine came to the rescue.

“Now it is very easily treatable. There is a gamma knife surgery. They fix screws on your face for 7-8 hours. They make you lie down and with the gamma knife…” he explained, recalling the marathon surgery. Miraculously, though he was warned the procedure might only reduce his pain by 20-30 percent, it wiped it out entirely.