Tom Hanks Diabetes: He's Got It, and Wants Us to Know Why

Tom Hanks has diabetes and now wishes he had taken better care of his body when he was younger, the actor said in an interview with Radio Times reported on by E! News.

The Oscar-winning actor, 59, first revealed his diabetes diagnoses on "The Late Show With David Letterman" in 2013 and told Radio Times that since then he has had time to think about what he could have done differently.

"I'm part of the lazy American generation that has blindly kept dancing through the party and now finds ourselves with a malady," Hanks said. "I was heavy. You've seen me in movies. You know what I looked like. I was a total idiot."

Hanks was promoting the movie "Captain Phillips," which got him a Golden Globe nomination, when he told Letterman about his condition, noted People.

"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,'" Hanks said on "The Late Show." 

"My doctor said, 'Look, if you can weigh as much as you weighed in high school you will essentially be perfectly healthy and not have Type 2 diabetes.' and I said to her, 'Well, I'm going to have Type 2 diabetes,'" Hanks said laughing, according to People. "I weighed 96 pounds in high school. I was a very skinny boy."

Hanks, who last starred in the Oscar-nominated movie "Bridge of Spies," told Radio Times he made some moderations to his eating habits but admitted that he needs to do more, noted E! News.

"I thought I could avoid it by removing the buns from my cheeseburgers," Hanks said, "Well, it takes a little bit more than that."

Type 2 diabetes often develops in middle-aged and older people who are overweight and inactive, said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Type 2 diabetes usually begins with insulin resistance — a condition that occurs when fat, muscle, and liver cells do not use insulin to carry glucose into the body’s cells to use for energy, resulting in the body needing more insulin to help glucose enter cells.

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