Olympic hero Steve Redgrave's health battle as he breaks silence on diagnosis
Olympic legend Sir Steve Redgrave is famous for showing grit and determination as he battled to win five rowing gold medals for TeamGB at five consecutive Games.
But over the last decade since retiring from the sport he’s been suffering a lack of verve.
“What I’ve been noticing is more weight gain, especially around the stomach area, a little bit more tiredness, culminating in depression – which I would class as the worst side of it,” says Steve, 61. “At first, I thought it was just getting older. I just accepted it.”
Eventually, he sought help from his GP, but even then he didn’t get to the bottom of the issue. It wasn’t until six months ago, when a friend suggested that his symptoms could be connected to testosterone deficiency, that things began to make sense.
“It just wasn’t something I had really considered,” he admits.
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Steve decided to investigate and took a blood test through Ted’s Health earlier this year, which indicated that his levels of the hormone were on the low side. He now realises he had all the tell-tale symptoms apart from low libido. “I don’t seem to have suffered as much of that as others.”
Steve, who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes at the age of 35, was also surprised to learn about the links between that condition and testosterone deficiency. Men who have the deficiency are four times more likely to develop type 2 diabetes and around half of men with type 2 diabetes will have low levels.
The sporting icon was first diagnosed in 1997 and says: “I had a grandfather who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in his sixties. But I never dreamed that I would develop it. It was probably the furthest condition from my mind.
“Normally a diabetic would be told to exercise more – I’m not sure I could have done that! My first thoughts were that my career was over. I didn’t think you could be a top athlete with that condition. But my consultant said ‘Why not?’
“I had an amazing medical team to help me find the way through.”
Mathew Pinsent and Steve Redgrave win the coxless two man rowing competition at the '92 Olympics (Mirrorpix)Steve went on to win another gold medal at the Sydney Games in 2000 in the coxless four and he now uses an insulin pump to regulate the amount of insulin his body gets over 24 hours and stabilise his blood sugar levels.
“When I was an athlete I was finger pricking my blood 10 times a day. Things have come a long way in treatment. The pump has made a big difference and my general health got a little bit better when I was being given a small amount of insulin all the time, 24 hours a day, compared to when you were injecting.
“My control is so much better than it was 20 years ago, though my wife Ann, who is a doctor, would say not as good as it should be.
“There is a mortality side to diabetes and the complications are pretty severe. If you look after yourself and monitor and control your blood sugar levels, there’s no reason why you can’t have a long and healthy life. But it is a pain, day in and day out, to make sure that your blood sugar levels are under control and that does get hard to deal with at times.
“I am starting to notice less feeling in my feet which is another one of the problems, especially being very tall. You’ve got all these complications that don’t hit you here and now, but will creep up on you sooner or later.”
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Steve Redgrave (left) and Matthew Pinsent celebrating their gold medal in 1996 (PA Wire/Press Association Images)Steve tries to maintain a healthy, but relatively normal diet.
“I try to have less volume than I did as an athlete,” he says. “We used to have up to 7,000 calories a day but we were burning it off. I’m probably on less than half of that now.”
When it comes to fitness these days, Steve rarely rows and admits to lacking motivation when he’s at home: “I find it hard,” he says, though he exercises three times a week on a static bike and enjoys golf.
Now he’s hoping to start testosterone replacement therapy, opting to take it in the form of an injection rather than a gel as he feels it will be “more convenient” that way. He hopes it will reduce his symptoms and give him a boost, adding: “I’m hoping for a bit more get up and go.
“My eldest daughter is expecting at the moment and I’m looking forward to being a grandparent. I want to be fit and healthy – and there are a lot of projects I want to get done around the house.”
Steve’s also urging other men to consider whether they might be suffering from low testosterone too and its role in their diabetes risk.
“Us blokes don’t help ourselves,” he says. “We think, ‘I’ll ignore that’ and we don’t tell our mates cos they’ll take the mickey out of us. I mean, it took me nine years to get help!
“But if you have weight control issues, tiredness, depression or low libido, you can rule things out with a simple blood test. It’s about finding things earlier.
“There’s a lot of evidence that testosterone therapy can even help reverse type 2 diabetes.
“It’s known that diabetics will probably die earlier than they would have done. If there is a way to improve your health and mortality, why not take it?”
- To find out more about testosterone deficiency visit tedshealth.com
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