Justin Timberlake reveals Lyme disease diagnosis
has said he is suffering from
Lyme disease
, a serious illness usually contracted after being bitten by a tick and that has seen an upsurge in prevalence across a swathe of the
US
in recent years.
In an Instagram post, the pop singer wrote: 'I've been battling some health issues, and was diagnosed with Lyme disease – which I don't say so you feel bad for me – but to shed some light on what I've been up against behind the scenes.'
He added: 'If you've experienced this disease or know someone who has – then you're aware: living with this can be relentlessly debilitating, both mentally and physically. When I first got the diagnosis I was shocked for sure. But, at least I could understand why I would be on stage and in a massive amount of nerve pain or, just feeling crazy fatigue or sickness.'
Timberlake's post came at the end of more than a year of him being on tour, which kicked off in April 2024 about one month after he released the album Everything I Thought It Was.
READ MORE
The singer faced scrutiny following perceived lacklustre performances on the road, with some who bought tickets criticising the concert on social media. Recently, some fans and commentators have pointed out what they felt were signs of fatigue or ill health during his performances.
Timberlake addressed the concerns, saying: 'I was faced with a personal decision. Stop touring? Or, keep going and figure it out. I decided the joy that performing brings me far outweighs the fleeting stress my body was feeling. I'm so glad I kept going.'
He added: 'Not only did I prove my mental tenacity to myself, but I now have so many special moments with all of you that I will never forget. I was reluctant to talk about this because I was always raised to keep something like this to yourself. But I am trying to be more transparent about my struggles so that they aren't misinterpreted.'
His statement on social media was met with an outpouring of support from fans. 'You are so loved, and we'll be here supporting whatever you decide to do next,' said one. Another added: 'Justin you are so appreciated. Thank you for showing up for us time and time again. Take care of yourself. We love you and will continue to ride for you.'
[
Ticks in Ireland: Lyme disease-carrying insects are coming for us and they're likely to hang around longer too
Opens in new window
]
According to Billboard, the Forget Tomorrow world tour pushed Timberlake to the 10th spot of Billboard's midyear Boxscore report of touring artists, with the tour grossing $73.2 million across 41 shows as of late May.
Timberlake is not the first famous musician who has spoken out publicly about their struggles with a diagnosis of Lyme disease, a condition which can cause a rash and symptoms such as fever, chills, fatigue and muscle and joint aches.
Avril Lavigne
,
Justin Bieber
and
Shania Twain
have also revealed they have suffered from the illness.
[
Lyme disease: The potentially debilitating illness rising in Ireland and beyond, fuelled by climate change
Opens in new window
]
Lyme disease can last many months or even years. Potentially disease-bearing ticks have been flourishing recently in the US, especially as
climate change
leads to warmer summers that encourage tick populations to thrive.
This year, as compared to recent years, there has been an increase in the reported number of ticks and visits to the emergency room because of bites from the tiny parasitic arachnid, according to data from universities and the US federal government.
In May and June this year, the US has seen the highest number of emergency room visits during those months for tick bites since 2019, according to the CDC.
Timberlake began his career as a 'Mouseketeer' on the All-New Mickey Mouse Club in 1993, where his cast mates included fellow singers Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. He rose to fame in the popular boy band NSync, before going solo in 2002 and becoming one of the bestselling pop artists of the 2000s.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor: Unexpected moments of devastation penetrate the predictability
Notes on Infinity Author : Austin Taylor ISBN-13 : 978-0241729489 Publisher : Michael Joseph Guideline Price : £16.99 In Austin Taylor's ambitious geek-chic novel, Zoe and Jack are Harvard students in love, a union 'looped around them ... tightening, lacing them together'. What's more, they have conceived an anti-ageing theory that gets old cells to revert to their original DNA blueprint; in short, a potential key to eternal youth. Like Bill Gates, they drop out and found a start-up. Structured like a DNA helix, Infinity follows two strands – Zoe's and Jack's – moving in opposing directions but entwined. We begin with Zoe until an inevitable shattering revelation, then restart with Jack to pinpoint the original flaw. Much relies on familiar tropes, like its classic Cambridge backdrop, which hasn't changed much since Zuckerberg – students still listen to Radiohead and debate the universe. There's a hint of the Stanford biomedical scandal Theranos, and Easter eggs (an Emily Dickinson poem, a character named Anna Lee) for fans of the Harvard start-up novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. Broad strokes convey worlds of backstory and baggage, because we've encountered these characters before. Jack's a scholarship kid with a drug-addict mother; Zoe's a daughter of an MIT physicist and a southern belle. Despite, or because of its predictability, there are unexpected moments of devastation, like an episode when Jack overhears his privileged friend make him the subject of a bet. Many novels seem written these days with a future adaptation in mind. Infinity is no exception, so streamlined it's practically a screenplay. Still, the author's words can have a raw punch. '[Jack] felt the fear and anger and embarrassment ... come slouching back. Not even taking turns with him any more: all sitting together in his belly, having drinks and making jokes at his expense.' However, I was most captivated by the beauty of Zoe and Jack's theory, which Taylor – herself a recent Harvard chemistry graduate – supports with scientific papers in the appendix, and the construction of her tale as the two narratives interlock and unravel. According to a 2010 paper in Nature Nanoscience, 'When a theory or a model explains a phenomenon clearly, directly and economically, we say it is elegant.' 'Elegant' – a word employed by the novel to describe experiments – is one of science's favourite adjectives. With a simple formula and two people in love, Notes Toward Infinity seeks to shed some clarity on the untidy business that is existing.
Irish Independent
11 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Louise McSharry: Yes, our teachers get a nice, long break off, Minister, but what about worn-out working parents?
As I type, I'm sitting at a table with my two sons. They're six and eight, and generally good boys, but today I would like to make them disappear. They're currently singing the same two lines of Justin Timberlake's Can't Stop This Feeling over and over again while they play a game which is generating its own litany of annoying sounds. I've asked them to stop, of course, but they can't help it; it's stuck in their heads. They don't even know they're doing it.
Irish Times
18 hours ago
- Irish Times
Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13 moon mission that inspired a movie, dies at 97
American astronaut Jim Lovell, commander of the failed 1970 mission to the moon that nearly ended in disaster but became an inspirational saga of survival and the basis for the hit movie Apollo 13, has died at the age of 97, Nasa said on Friday. Hollywood star Tom Hanks played Lovell in director Ron Howard's acclaimed 1995 film. It recounted Nasa's Apollo 13 mission, which was planned as humankind's third lunar landing but went horribly wrong when an on-board explosion on the way to the moon put the lives of the three astronauts in grave danger. Lovell and crewmates Jack Swigert and Fred Haise endured frigid, cramped conditions, dehydration and hunger for 3½ days while concocting with mission control in Houston ingenious solutions to bring the crippled spacecraft safely back to Earth. 'A 'successful failure' describes exactly what Apollo 13 was – because it was a failure in its initial mission – nothing had really been accomplished,' Lovell told Reuters in 2010 in an interview marking the 40th anniversary of the flight. READ MORE The outcome, the former Navy test pilot said, was 'a great success in the ability of people to take an almost-certain catastrophe and turn it into a successful recovery.' The Apollo 13 mission came nine months after Neil Armstrong had become the first person to walk on the moon when he took 'one giant leap for mankind' during the Apollo 11 mission on July 20, 1969. There was drama even before Apollo 13's launch on April 11, 1970. Days earlier, the backup lunar module pilot inadvertently exposed the crew to German measles but Lovell and Haise were immune to it. Ken Mattingly, the command module pilot, had no immunity to measles and was replaced at the last minute by rookie astronaut Swigert. The mission generally went smoothly for its first two days. But moments after the crew finished a TV broadcast showing how they lived in space, an exposed wire in a command module oxygen tank sparked an explosion that badly damaged the spacecraft 200,000 miles (320,000km) from Earth. The accident not only ruined their chances of landing on the moon but imperilled their lives. 'Suddenly there's a hiss-bang. And the spacecraft rocks back and forth,' Lovell said in a 1999 Nasa oral history interview. 'The lights come on and jets fire. And I looked at Haise to see if he knew what caused it. He had no idea. Looked at Jack Swigert. He had no idea. And then, of course, things started to happen.' Swigert saw a warning light and told mission control: 'Houston, we've had a problem here.' In the movie, the line is instead attributed to Lovell and famously delivered by Hanks – slightly reworded – as: 'Houston, we have a problem.' With a dangerous loss of power, the three astronauts abandoned the command module and went to the lunar module – designed for two men to land on the moon. They used it as a lifeboat for a harrowing 3½ day return to Earth. The astronauts and the US space agency experts in Houston scrambled to figure out how to get the crew safely home with a limited amount of equipment at their disposal. Kevin Bacon, Tom Hanks and Bill Paxton in the 1995 film Apollo 13. Photograph: Universal/Getty Images Electrical systems were turned off to save energy, sending temperatures plummeting to near freezing. Water was drastically rationed, food was short and sleep was nearly impossible. The crew had to contrive a filter system to remove high levels of carbon dioxide that could have proven deadly. 'The thought crossed our mind that we were in deep trouble. But we never dwelled on it,' Lovell said in the Nasa interview. 'We never admitted to ourselves that, 'hey, we're not going to make it'. Well, only one time – when Fred looked at . . . the lunar module and found out we had about 45 hours worth of power and we were 90 hours from home.' People worldwide were captivated by the events unfolding in space – and got a happy ending. The astronauts altered course to fly a single time around the moon and back to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near Samoa on April 17th, 1970. Lovell never got another chance to walk on the moon after Apollo 13, which was his fourth and final space trip. His first trip had been the Gemini 7 mission in 1965, featuring the first link-up of two manned spacecraft. His second was Gemini 12 in 1966, the last of the programmes that led to the Apollo moon missions. Lovell's third mission was Apollo 8 in December 1968, the first to orbit the moon. During a telecast to Earth from their spacecraft on Christmas Eve, Lovell and crewmates Frank Borman and William Anders read verses from the Bible's Book of Genesis. Lovell, who later had a moon crater named in his honour, retired as an astronaut in 1973, working first for a harbour towing company and then in telecommunications. He co-authored a 1994 book, Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, that became the basis for Howard's film. Lovell recalled a meeting with Howard in which the director asked the astronaut which actor he would want to play him. 'I said Kevin Costner,' Lovell said. 'And Hanks never lets me forget Hanks did a great job.' Lovell made a cameo appearance in the film as the commander of the US Navy ship that retrieves the astronauts and shakes hands with Hanks. James Lovell was born in Cleveland on March 25, 1928. He was five when his father died and his mother moved the family to Milwaukee. He became interested in space as a teenager. He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1952 and became a test pilot before being selected as a Nasa astronaut in 1962. He had four children with his wife, Marilyn. – Reuters (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2025
