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Music

Alan Jackson’s ‘no cure’ disease Charcot-Marie-Tooth explained

By
Hannah Sparks
Published Sep. 29, 2021
Updated Sep. 29, 2021, 12:22 p.m. ET

Country music veteran Alan Jackson has recently opened up to the media about his life with the Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease.

On Tuesday, the 62-year-old told NBC’s “Today” that there is “no cure” for the degenerative neurological syndrome, which he’s battled for nearly a decade. The timeline of the diagnosis as he tells it has finally shed light on the beloved artist’s absence from the spotlight as of late.

The “Chattahoochee” singer assured viewers the disease, caused by a genetic mutation he inherited from his father, is “not going to kill” him. Nevertheless, it has affected his ability to perform, or even appear on live broadcasts.

“It’s getting more and more obvious. And I know I’m stumbling around onstage. And now I’m having a little trouble balancing, even in front of the microphone, and so I just feel very uncomfortable,” he explained.

Like other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s or Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease (CMT) is a group of disorders that cause nerve damage, inhibiting the brain and spinal cord from communicating with the rest of the body, according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Motor nerves connected to the arms, hands, legs and feet are often affected in patients with CMT, causing muscle weakness, atrophy and, eventually, for some, paralysis in certain limbs. Deformities of the foot, such as hammertoes, are also common as muscles are locked in a state of contraction.

Alan Jackson
Country music veteran Alan Jackson has recently opened up about life with Charcot-Marie-Tooth (CMT) disease. How will CMT affect his career? Getty Images for ACM

Meanwhile, fine motor skills are lost, and patients may become desensitized to physical stimuli as their sensory nerve axons lose the ability to transmit information back to the brain, including such important sensory signals as extreme heat or cold, or even human touch.

The diagnosis comes after a full physical exam and family history are analyzed by doctors, who look for signs of muscle weakness and loss, poor reflexes, sensory loss and foot deformities. Genetic testing is a final step for some as blood samples can detect many types of CMT, according to NIH.

Despite the physical hurdles, Jackson has insisted it ain’t over ’til it’s over. “I never wanted to do the big retirement tour, like people do, then take a year off and then come back,” he told attendees at Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame in 2017, revealing he hopes that he’ll be able to return to the stage again and again.

And that he did last summer, putting aside his own health troubles during the height of the pandemic. In July 2020, the “Livin’ On Love” crooner took to the platform of a drive-in cinema in Alabama for back-to-back socially-distanced concerts, drawing in a crowd of some 12,000 total.

Of the event, he told CBS Sunday Morning last year, “I thought this would be a fun way to let people get out of the house and enjoy some live music.”