Dan Marino: I've Got Liver Disease

Dan Marino retired from the NFL in 2000, and after 17 seasons of being a peak athlete in the NFL, he tells People in an exclusive that he "let my diet go." By 2007, the legendary Miami Dolphins quarterback said he was feeling "a little fatigued," and then came a normal checkup with the diagnosis of liver disease—specifically, metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH). "Then they told me I had a fatty liver. I had MASH," says Marino, who's telling his story on behalf of Novo Nordisk's Unordinary Stories campaign, in the hope of getting "people aware of it, so maybe they can get treated and it can make a difference in their lives."

Though MASH can lead to cirrhosis and liver cancer, all was not lost, and the Hall of Famer says that he took the diagnosis by the horns. "The doctors right away said that can be reversible, it can be taken care of, but, mainly for me, they were saying, like, 'You gotta work out. You got to lose weight.'" So Marino hit the gym, the bicycle, and the walking paths and got to know the Mediterranean diet. As he says, his docs told him to "cut back on the wine and pizza and candy, ice cream, those kind of things, you know—you can't eat those as much." While his diagnosis "hasn't changed," he thinks it'll "get better."