With the tennis calendar in its final few months, Emma Navarro is speaking out about her health and revealing what the last three years have looked like for her.

The young American star revealed she was diagnosed with Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S) and Hashimoto’s hypothyroidism in the fall of 2025 in a 14-slide Instagram post Wednesday.

The latter is a condition that involves a body that cannot produce enough energy to support the demand of physical activity and daily life.

Her great improvement since, in which she “gained my life back,” has encouraged Navarro to pull out of competing in Asia and take the rest of the year off to focus on her medication and nutrition ahead of the Australian Open at the start of 2027.

Navarro added in the lengthy and vulnerable post that her journey to this point began in 2023, which was her first full year on tour.

In that year, the Charleston, S.C. native climbed from 150 in the WTA rankings to nearly 30 after competing in 88 matches — which she claimed was the most of any man or woman in professional tennis.

She went on to win the WTA 250 tournament in Hobart in early 2024 and carried that into a third-round Australian Open appearance.

Navarro was pushing herself to the limit, but she said, “I was doing what my team and I thought was best.”

“From the outside, things looks great,” she explained as she continued to rise through the ranks, become more athletic on the court and the “fittest” version of herself at that point.

However, Navarro admitted she knew “something was off. Or at least something was different.”

Navarro continued to push on throughout the season.

She made the quarterfinals at Indian Wells and Wimbledon, pushed to the fourth round of Roland Garros and earned a semifinal berth at the U.S. Open that gave her a career-high No. 8 world ranking.

She started to become a household name in America as she continued to prove herself under the brightest lights.

However, Navarro detailed the start of her health troubles that took a toll on her.

She started to experience frustration, perfectionism, worry and anger. She was also constantly hungry, revealing she dropped nearly 20 pounds in 2023 and 10 more over the course of 2024.

“Everything began to annoy me,” she wrote in the post. “My team, other people, anything that didn’t align with my specific preferences or routines. Any imperfection on the court. Every mistake. Every point I lost. But I tried my hardest to not let people see how I felt. To keep it together.”

Her condition worsened over time as she ran into immune system issues, consistently finding herself under the weather, and mental health troubles, including brain fog, headaches and a struggle remembering things and articulating her thoughts.

“I had to be so careful about expending energy because I couldn’t afford to waste any,” she said. “I had night after night of restless sleep, waking up just as tired as before. My skin began to show signs of weakness, developing rashes on my neck and scalp.”

While on tour in Asia in 2024, Navarro experienced another head cold and was too “weak and exhausted” to warm up. It continued for three weeks in China, but she chalked it up to having a long season — and her best season.

She took two weeks off before returning to training, which only brought back those symptoms experienced in Asia.

By the Australian Open in 2025, Navarro found herself “in tears” in the gym, “so confused about why I couldn’t play.”

Through what she said was “pure grit and will”, Navarro went on to the quarterfinals in Australia, but it was “the last bit of myself I had.”

After winning as high as 72 percent of her matches in 2023 (64-24), Navarro dropped her winning rate to 56 percent in 2025 (32-25). She fell in the first round of Roland Garros and in the third round of the U.S. Open.

Finishing the year in a similar spot, Navarro hit her breaking point and went on to visit various specialists and nutritionists, whom revealed she had been under-fueling for nearly three years.

Navarro said her body was “screaming at me for years, and I ignored it.”

Over the last year, Navarro has changed everything about how she has approached her career and life outside the court.

She has changed her diet, increased her “energy” intake, logged her blood sugar and symptoms, and has undergone various blood draws and medicine tweaks while visiting a variety of specialists.

A few months in and Navarro noticed a difference as she slept better, encountered fewer headaches, found mental clarity, and began to feel more strength in her muscles and greater energy.

All of it converted on the court as well.

After early round exits, Navarro won Strasbourg, the WTA 500 clay court tournament, in May. She later made it to the final of Nottingham, a WTA 250 grass tune-up for Wimbledon.

Her biggest impression came at the U.S. Open — Navarro’s final tournament of the year — where she played incredibly well into the quarterfinals in Queens and lost to fellow American Jessica Pegula in three sets.

The current world No. 24 is aiming to bounce back even stronger as she continues to navigate this new reality in her young tennis career.

“So yeah, I gained some weight this year. But I also gained my life back. I have enough energy to seize every day,” Navarro concluded. “To train or compete as hard as I want to. And to live a life outside of tennis. To laugh. To be curious. To be spontaneous. To spend time with the people I care about. To feel joy. Hope and positivity. And to appreciate the incredible gift of life.

“I have learned that there is no weight on the scale or leanness in your limbs that is more valuable than your health or well-being.”