Appearing on the Late Show with David Letterman, Tom Hanks addressed his recent health concerns.
Hanks said that he was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes on a recent visit to his doctor and after dealing with high blood sugar for over twenty years.
The Hollywood Reporter finds, in talking to CBS medical contributor Holly Phillips, that Hanks’s history of losing and gaining weight large sums of weight may have helped to contribute to his diagnosis. Says Phillips, “In dramatic weight gain or dramatic weight loss, the equilibrium of the body is just completely off, so that might predispose him to developing Type 2 diabetes later.”
Hanks is taking the diagnosis in stride telling Letterman, “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.'”