Rana Daggubati opens up about battling life-threatening health problems; Rhea Chakraborty says he was in ‘beast mode’ even then: ‘You broke a chair’ | Telugu News
4 min readKochiFeb 17, 2026 04:25 PM IST
Although Rana Daggubati is often hailed for his chiselled body and the effort he puts into maintaining his physique, the Baahubali star has gone through severe health issues over the years, including a diagnosis of heart complications and kidney failure. Calling the post-recovery period a “Chapter 2” of sorts, he recently shared how he overcame this challenging period, which completely changed his life.
“When I was first diagnosed, it came as a shock. You don’t expect anything to happen to you, right? That’s not how you normally think. For you, you are always the centre of the world. That was the first time I realised that I could get displaced. You know how to feel when a friend or family member is unwell; you know how to react. But you don’t know how to react when it’s happening to you. Yes, you get sympathy from a lot of people, and they really want to know what happened because they’re in shock too. But for you, it’s a reality shift: ‘It’s possible for me not to be there.’ Now I can say it much more easily. But there was a time when understanding that was quite complicated,” he shared during a recent appearance on Chapter 2 with Rhea Chakraborty.
After realising that the journey connected to the health scare would be long, involving surgery and post-surgery care, Rana said his immediate response was to “check out” of everything he was doing, including a movie he was only halfway through. Subsequently, he went to the US for treatment, and the actor said it was probably the first time he had been by himself for a really long time. “Just me and my thoughts. In such a situation, you start thinking much more in terms of purpose: ‘Why are you [t]here?’ Unless the ‘why’ is clear, nothing means anything, because ultimately, we’re only representing stories that are in our heads that we’ve made for ourselves,” he noted.
How the way Rana Daggubati approached life changed
This experience, nevertheless, made Rana realise where he wanted to head in life. “You operate on the principle that you will not be here one day. And you are building everything so they can sustain without you. Earlier, things were built with me at the centre. But thereon, the way I approached life changed,” he added. As the conversation continued, Rhea recalled that even amid the health scare, Rana was in his “beast mode.” “Last time I saw you at a summit, you broke a chair just by sitting on it,” she said. Rhea also noted that the health-scare episode in Rana’s life lasted for a year.
What were Rana Daggubati’s health problems?
While he was still basking in the global success of Baahubali 2: The Conclusion (2017), even after the passage of a few months since its release, Rana fell ill and had to take a break. During an appearance on Samantha Ruth Prabhu’s talk show, Sam Jam, he reportedly revealed, “When life is on a fast-forward mode, there is suddenly a pause button. I had BP since my birth and doctors told that I also have serious problems like calcification around the heart and failed kidneys. It would have been a 70 per cent chance of a stroke or haemorrhage and 30 per cent chance of death”
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But those weren’t the only health issues Rana has faced. He also had vision problems and underwent an eye transplant years ago. “Very few people knew about it. By logic, it’s a handicap. If I shut one eye, I can’t see from the other. But it is one of those things which I don’t think too much about. One needs to have the strength to move forward,” he told news agency PTI during a 2017 interview.
