Tom Hanks Reveals Type 2 Diabetes, But Can't Follow His MD's Suggestion To Return To His High School Weight To Cure It: ''I Weighed 96 Pounds In High School!"

Tom Hanks has revealed that he has been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

During an appearance Monday night on "Late Show With David Letterman" in promotion of his new film "Captain Phillips," Hanks revealed his doctor told him that he had moved from a prediabetic state to having the disease.

"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,' " Hanks told Letterman. " 'You've got Type 2 diabetes, young man.' "

The audience looked saddened, but Hanks joked about his condition.

"It's controllable," he said, but then added, "Something's gonna kill us all, Dave."

However, his doctor's suggestion of how to control it may not be the easiest thing to pull off.

"My doctor said, 'Look, if you can weigh as much as you weighed in high school, you'll essentially be completely healthy. You will not have Type 2 diabetes,'" Hanks said. "I said to her, 'Well, I'm going to have Type 2 diabetes, because there's no way I can weigh as much as I did in high school.'"

How much did he weigh in high school? Oh, 96 pounds."Most of it was that big, wide afro," Hanks recalled.

Hanks appears to be slim and trim, but he is as human as the rest of us-and prone to the same health issues, he announced.

In people with diabetes, blood sugar is not well regulated. As a result, the body either does not produce enough insulin in order to function properly or the cells in the body do not react to the insulin that is present