After obtaining his baccalaureate, Michel Cymes embarked on a career as a doctor. He completed his training at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Chartres and specialized in otorhinolaryngological surgery. In the early 90s, he participated as a doctor in a car rally in the Sahara. It was on this occasion that he met several journalists from Europe 1. Thanks to this first contact, he was offered the writing of scientific chronicles.
From 1991 and until 1994, he put aside the operating theaters to concentrate on his media career by becoming a medical columnist in the program Télématin on France 2. Subsequently, he was hired by La Cinquième (France 5 today) to present the program Qui vive and Attention santé until 1997. On the strength of this experience, he became editor-in-chief and co-host of the Journal de la santé (which became Le Magazine de la Santé par la suite) alongside her colleague Marina Carrère D’Encausse and Benoît Thévenet. Success was immediate and Michel Cymes quickly became a medical star in the media.
“I am hyperactive and I have a lot of trouble concentrating. Sometimes, while preparing an RTL column for example, I have a new idea for my next book and move on completely. So the solution I found was to know how to surround myself with competent people and how to delegate. Marina Carrère d’Encausse and Benoît Thévenet on the front line of course, but there is also a team of 80 people on Le Magazine de la Santé”, he told Capital in 2017.
But Michel Cymes is not confined to television. In 2005, he became a medical columnist on Europe 1 and hosted Comment ça va bien… merci every Saturday until 2008 and then on RTL in Ça va déjà mieux. At the same time, he devoted himself to the writing of several books, including La nutrition ou bien manger, une histoire de santé and La Sexualité, que d’histoires!.
After 20 years at the head of Health Magazine, Michel Cymes decided to leave the program to devote himself to other projects. “We’ve been preparing for his departure for two years. Michel presented the magazine from the start. It’s normal that he wants to evolve. He stays in the family and can come and see us when he wants,” explained Benoît Thévenet Since 2018, he has hosted the talk show Ça ne sera pas d’ici on France 2.
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Michel Cymes is the father of two boys, from his first union in 1997 and 1999 and a third son born of his relationship with his wife Nathalie in 2011. Michel Cymes and Nathalie passed the ring on May 23, 2015. In the columns of Femme Actuelle, the host had recounted his marriage proposal which turned sour.
“I am divorced, but I knew that this union had meaning for Nathalie. It had been years since we had mentioned the subject and I wanted to surprise him. Nathalie was so stuck, that instead of telling me: ‘My love, it’s wonderful’, she just replied: ‘Uh, well yes’. We ended up yelling at each other: ‘Thank you for your reaction, I’ve been thinking about it for years and you’re just telling me that,’ he said.
On March 10, 2020, Michel Cymes created controversy by stating on the Daily set that the coronavirus was “a form of flu, a little more severe than the flu, but it remains a viral disease like we have every year” . Words that were intended to be reassuring, but which nevertheless made Internet users jump. Faced with this growing controversy, Michel Cymes wanted to make his mea-culpa on the set of C à vous on March 16: “I’m doing my mea-culpa too, I probably reassured the French too much”, he had Explain.
On May 12, 2020, the doctor and host confided in Parisian about the media lynching he had followed following his remarks. A situation that made him think about his future on television.
“I made a mistake at the beginning: I wanted, with sincerity, to spread the scientific word of the moment and try to reassure. I did too much (…) I am in full reflection. This period was scientifically troubling. I ask myself a lot of questions about my role as an informant and the difficulty of carrying it out. Scientific speech today is no longer what it was before the epidemic. All these controversies over treatments or with politicians… I found it so violent and sometimes irrelevant that it forces you to think,” he explained.
A shock testimony to come. On October 5, 2022, host Michel Cymes returns to bookstores to deliver his secrets in a new book to be published by Stock editions. A book in which the famous PAF doctor reveals that he has recovered from cancer, as announced by his publisher, relayed with AFP.
“You will find that cancer does not only happen to others and that it is important to get screened because we are not always lucky, like me, to discover it by chance”, explains the author and former – presenter of the Magazine de la Santé in the presentation of his book. An “unexpected book, where the one who remains the favorite doctor of the French speaks for the first time of the important moments of his life”, specifies the program of the Stock editions. A moving testimony for his fans who will also learn the secrets of his journey since his youth.
