With less than eight weeks until Election Day and pressure mounting for the candidates to give details about their health and medical histories, Donald Trump acknowledged Wednesday that he was overweight and taking a cholesterol-fighting drug, and Hillary Clinton elaborated on the circumstances that led to her contracting pneumonia and the medicine she was taking to recover.
Clinton’s doctor said that she “continues to improve” after contracting a “mild, noncontagious” form of pneumonia diagnosed on Friday, two days before she grew dizzy and was seen losing her footing while leaving a ceremony in New York for the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In a letter released by the Clinton campaign, the physician, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, said she had evaluated Clinton several times since Sunday, including on Wednesday.
“She is recovering well with antibiotics and rest,” Bardack said. “She continues to remain healthy and fit to serve as president of the United States.”
After Clinton left Sunday’s Sept. 11 ceremony early, a spokesman initially said only that she had felt overheated. But after video shot by an onlooker showed Secret Service agents helping a wobbly Clinton into a van, her campaign released a statement from Bardack saying that Clinton had pneumonia.
Trump, who has fanned conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health, has provided scant information about his own. On Wednesday, he taped an appearance on Dr. Mehmet Oz’s daytime television show in which he discussed his health to some degree, including the results of a physical last week, according to people present for the taping and a clip released by the show’s publicists.
But little information was available about what was said on the show, which will be broadcast Thursday, other than that Trump, 70, said he was taking regular doses of a statin, a drug that lowers cholesterol, and gave his weight as 236 pounds.
At about 6-foot-2, Trump would have a body mass index of 30.3. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute defines obesity as a body mass index of 30 or more, and overweight as 25 to 29.9.
NBC News reported that Dr. Oz pronounced Trump “slightly overweight.”
Democrats have seized on Trump’s weight this week, with Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, noting Tuesday that he was hardly “slim and trim,” and David Plouffe, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, suggesting on Twitter that he would rival William Howard Taft in portliness.
Trump has yet to make public as much personal medical information as Clinton has.
Earlier in the week, he said he would soon release new medical records and discuss the results of his physical on Dr. Oz’s show. Early Wednesday, his aides reversed course, saying that he would not discuss the physical even with Dr. Oz, a prolific Republican donor who had said publicly that he did not plan to ask Trump tough questions. But during the taping, Trump theatrically produced what he described as the results of his physical and allowed Dr. Oz to review them, according to the brief clip that the show released.
Until this week, the latest medical information about Trump had come in December in a letter from his longtime physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, which included a few numbers — Trump’s blood pressure and PSA test score — and little else aside from superlatives and boasts. The letter also said that Trump had lost 15 pounds over the previous year, though it did not give his weight before or after.
In the letter released by the Clinton campaign, Bardack said that she had examined Clinton, 68, on Friday for a prolonged, allergy-related cough, discovered “small right middle-lobe pneumonia,” put her on antibiotics and advised her “to rest and modify her schedule.” At the Sept. 11 ceremony, she said, Clinton “became overheated and dehydrated,” but was “rehydrated and recovering nicely” later that day.
Criticized for concealing Clinton’s illness, her aides apologized on Monday and promised to release more information about her medical history.
Clinton canceled trips to California and Nevada this week to rest, but she planned to return to the campaign trail Thursday with a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a speech in Washington at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Bardack’s letter also cast some new light on the persistent cough that Clinton complained of before she was found to have pneumonia. Bardack said she had examined Clinton on Sept. 2, a week before the pneumonia diagnosis, after Clinton experienced a low-grade fever, congestion and fatigue. She prescribed antibiotics and rest, but Clinton continued to travel, and over several days, “her congestion worsened and she developed a cough,” Bardack wrote.
That Monday, Clinton had an extended coughing attack while trying to deliver a Labor Day speech in Cleveland.
The details released Wednesday included that Clinton has been taking the antibiotic Levaquin, “as well as B-12 as needed.”
Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University, said that the information suggested Clinton may have had the pneumonia for a longer period, and that she needed a follow-up examination and X-rays to make sure it was responding well to the antibiotics.
Bardack wrote that “the remainder of her complete physical exam was normal, and she is in excellent mental condition.” Her letter did not include Clinton’s height or weight.
It did note, however, that in January, Clinton developed a sinus and ear infection that caused “progressive pain in her left ear.” She was treated with antibiotics as well as the placement of a myringotomy tube in her ear, and her symptoms resolved by March.
Before Sunday, Bardack’s last public comment about Clinton’s health had come in a two-page letter in July 2015 describing her as a “healthy female with hypothyroidism and seasonal allergies” who was in “excellent physical condition.”
Clinton has expressed frustration with what she says is a double standard, in which she is expected to adhere to traditional levels of transparency but Trump is not penalized for ignoring them. She has quickly shifted from questions about her medical records to criticizing Trump for not releasing his tax returns.
“It’s really past time for him to be held to the same standards,” she told CNN on Monday night.
Clinton’s running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, also released a doctor’s letter Wednesday, saying he was in excellent health and worked out three times a week. Dr. Brian Monahan, the attending physician to Congress, said Kaine’s cholesterol and blood lipids were elevated, but made no mention of a statin drug. The upper chamber of the left side of Kaine’s heart is enlarged, but Monahan noted nothing else unusual about his heart or major arteries.