Tom Hanks has been busy promoting his latest movie Captain Phillips, which details the hardships a ship crew endured when their vessel was boarded by pirates. Now, Hanks is opening up about a personal struggle, his type 2 diabetes.
According to USA Today, the 57-year-old star revealed that he has been diagnosed with the disease on an appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman on Monday, October 7th.
“I went to the doctor and he said, ‘You know those high blood sugar numbers you’ve been dealing with since you were 36? Well, you’ve graduated. You’ve got Type 2 diabetes, young man,” he said.
“My doctor said, ‘Look, if you can weigh as much as you weighed in high school, you will essentially be completely healthy. You will not have Type 2 diabetes.’ And then I said to her, ‘Well, then I’m gonna have Type 2 diabetes, because there is no way I can weigh as much as I did in high school.”
E! Online reports that Hanks’s high school weight was 96 pounds. Hanks joked about his teenage appearance saying, “You know, most of that was that big white afro that I wore back in the ‘70s.”
Hanks is not alone in his battle with type 2 diabetes. Other celebrities that have been diagnosed with the disease are Patti Labelle, Drew Carey. Sherri Shepherd and Paula Deen.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.