Thomas Jeffrey Hanks was born in 1956 and is an American actor and filmmaker. His acting accolades include Big, Sleepless in Seattle, The Green Mile, Cast Away, Saving Private Ryan and Toy Story. One of the most talented actors of our time, he has grossed more than $4.6 billion at box offices and is the fourth highest-grossing actor. Despite his incredible success, the actor revealed his health battles and having to deal with the life-long condition, type 2 diabetes.
The gaining and the losing of weight may have had something to do with developing diabetes because you eat so much bad food and you don’t take any exercise when you’re heavy
Tom Hanks
Over the years, Hanks’ weight has bounced up and down due to the various characters he played. In 1992, Hanks had to put on 30 pounds for his role as a baseball coach in A League of Their Own and a year later his weight dropped suddenly in order to play an AIDS -ravaged attorney in Philadelphia.
For his role in Cast Away, the actor had to shed 55 pounds to play a character stranded on an island.
The yo-yo dieting had devastating effects on the actors body.
Speaking at a London press conference, Hanks said: “The gaining and the losing of weight may have had something to do with developing diabetes because you eat so much bad food and you don’t take any exercise when you’re heavy.”
Speaking to Radio Times, Hanks said: “I’m part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party. I was heavy.
“You’ve seen me in movies, you know what I looked like,” he continued. “I was a total idiot. I thought I could avoid it by removing the buns from my cheeseburgers, well, it takes a little bit more than that.”
One of the top risk factors for developing type 2 diabetes is being overweight.
When a person carries too much fat tissue, especially around the midsection, the body’s cells can become resistant to insulin which is a hormone that moves sugar out the blood and into the cells.
Symptoms of type 2 diabetes:
- Frequent urination
- Increased thirst
- Always feeling hungry
- Blurry vision
- Slow healing cuts and wounds
- Tingling and numbness in the hands and feet
Speaking on the Late Show with host David Letterman, Hanks said: “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.”
The two-time Oscar winner has sworn off any future roles that involves having to put on weight.
There is no guarantee that diabetes can go away forever but there are ways to help reverse type 2 diabetes. Diabetes UK said: “Our scientists believe that storing too much fat in the liver and pancreas affects how Type2 diabetes develops and losing this fat can help put your diabetes into remission.
“In fact, losing around 15kg significantly increases your chances of Type 2 diabetes remission.”
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