Famous Friday: Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley is one of music’s biggest icons. With his unique twist of blending types of music together such as blues with country   and became a huge success. But I bet the one thing you didn’t know about Elvis was that he had diabetes. This was total and complete news to me. Although it is unknown what type of diabetes Elvis had, I feel we can assume it was Type 1 due to the fact the he took insulin injections. There isn’t a lot of information about his diabetes; apparently it was one part of his life that he was able to private. Many of his fans have their own beliefs as to why he chose to keep this part of his private. Some of his fans claim he deliberately chose to keep it private from the world. Others felt that he didn’t need to make it public because he was able to keep it controlled on his own.

There is a conference each year where all of his fan club presidents from all over the world meet and talk about Elvis. They invite certain charities one of them being the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRA). They share stories of Elvis and have special guest speakers come and share home video footage. His fan clubs are not the only ones donating to diabetes awareness. Elvis Presley Enterprises (which began from an Elvis Presley trust) works with American Diabetes Association to help with diabetes awareness.

Even though there is little information out there about his diabetes I believe as diabetics the one thing we can take from Elvis is not to let diabetes keep us down and from doing the things we love.