Alda, despite living life to the fullest he possibly can, has been plagued by health issues. Parkinson's disease is the major culprit.
He was diagnosed with the disease in early 2015, but he revealed that only in July 2018. During an interview with CBS This Morning, he said that despite the diagnosis, he had had "a full life."
Talking about how he first suspected he might have the disease, he recalled an incident from years ago where he acted out his dream. He had read somewhere that one of the signs of Parkinson's disease was to act out dreams.
"I was having a dream that someone was attacking me and I threw a sack of potatoes at them," he remembered. "But what I was really doing was throwing a pillow at my wife."
So, he went to a neurologist to get his brain scanned. The doctor was skeptical about his self-diagnosis at first, but he, too, was shocked to see that Alda had the disease.
Immediately after the diagnosis, Alda changed his lifestyle. "I began to exercise," he told AARP in May 2020.
He knew doing nothing wasn't an option and one could hold off the worst symptoms with exercise. But he wasn't the one to lash out because of the diagnosis. He was "not angry." Instead, he looked at his condition as a puzzle to play with and master.
