Tom Hanks: ‘Idiot’ diet to blame for my diabetes
HOLLYWOOD legend Tom Hanks has spoken of his daily battle with Type 2 diabetes and admits he was a “total idiot” for not controlling his diet as a young man.
The Oscar-winning star also believes dramatic weight changes he underwent to play screen roles contributed to the condition. Hanks, who turns 60 in July, told Radio Times he is now haunted by his eating habits in his 30s and 40s.
He said: “I’m part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party and now finds ourselves with a malady. I was heavy.
“You’ve seen me in movies, you know what I looked like. 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. But my doctor says if I can hit a target weight, I will not have Type 2 diabetes any more.”
Hanks, who specialises in playing “regular guys”, sees the irony in having one of the most common of modern diseases.
He said: “That’s right, an everyman’s affliction. I’m in Hollywood and I make movies. Some do great and some don’t.”
Hanks, who is married to actress Rita Wilson, had diabetes symptoms for two decades before being diagnosed in his late 50s.
He once recalled: “The doctor 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.”
Hanks, who won best actor Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, has often transformed his body to portray characters.
In the 1992 film A League Of Their Own he put on 30lbs to play a baseball coach.
Dramatic
Then when he starred in Cast Away in 2000, he lost 50lbs to make himself believable as a man stuck on a desert island.
A doctor in the US has said of Hanks: “In dramatic weight gain and dramatic weight loss, the equilibrium of the body is just completely off.
“So that might predispose him to developing Type 2 diabetes. He’ll have to watch what he eats very closely, he’ll need to exercise regularly, but there’s no reason he can’t live a perfectly normal life.”
An estimated 366 million people across the world suffer from diabetes.
Most have Type 2, a condition in which the body does not produce enough insulin to maintain normal blood sugar levels, or the insulin produced does not work properly.
The condition has been linked to obesity, poor diet and sedentary lifestyles and can lead to serious complications including kidney damage, blindness, nerve damage, heart disease and loss of limbs.
Experts believe most cases could be prevented by following a healthy lifestyle.