- Frontman Nick Jonas has managed type 1 diabetes for 20 years.
- The band's “JONAS20: Greetings from Your Hometown Tour” celebrates its 20th anniversary concurrent with Nick Jonas’s two-decade experience with diabetes.
- Nick Jonas discusses how these two anniversaries have impacted his life and how he leverages his music to promote understanding for type 1 diabetes.
This year, the number 20 holds special significance for renowned artist Nick Jonas.
While the band commemorates their 20th year as a band, 2025 also marks 20 years since their frontman's type 1 diabetes discovery.
“The alignment is remarkable,” Jonas remarked. “It's been an incredible ride in both… regarding the band, it’s been the ride of a lifetime, and we’ve been so blessed to be able to do this for 20 years now and to have the support of the world’s greatest fans.”
Parallel to the band’s experience over the last two decades, he said he has had wonderful and challenging moments living with diabetes. The struggles of controlling his disease have been the lows, while raising awareness and engaging others as a spokesperson and through his foundation have brought him joy.
“Overall, I’m really grateful to have been able to be transparent about [type 1] and to interact with all these wonderful people from all regions of the world who are navigating their own diabetes journey, and it’s a really big thing to feel like you’re a little less isolated in it,” said Jonas.
The Singer's A1C Announcement to Fans
To thank his fans, on World Diabetes Day (November 14), he stepped onto the platform during a Jonas Brothers concert and surprised his audience by sharing an uplifting message of hope, along with a mention to his A1C.
“My A1C, which is a collection of numbers over a three-month period, was the most favorable it’s ever been, in fact, most recently,” he revealed.
The show was visited by members of a worldwide group — a network of more than 30,000 people worldwide who share their experiences with diabetes to help spread a message of resilience, determination, and optimism.
“It was really meaningful for me to get to use the Jonas Brothers’ stage as a place to speak about something that’s clearly very important to me and on World Diabetes Day, I think it’s fitting to get reflective and to explore kind of what life looks like for me as a now thirty-three-year-old person living with this disease,” he said.
Jonas dedicated the song “A Little Bit Longer” — a melody he wrote at the start of his career and diabetes journey, to those affected by the disease.
“It’s a really important time for me to get to speak on stage like that and play a song that I wrote about these experiences when I was 14 and to see the effect it still has to this day with the fan base,” he said.
While the song has taken on a new meaning for him as an adult, he said it is still relevant.
“Now I [have] this great, big community that I belong to that has supported me in so many various moments. I think my outlook is possibly a lot more positive now. It is possible to live a big, busy life while managing this disease and mindset and perspective and all that is an essential piece to persevering.”
Advancements in Diabetes Management
In the past, life with type 1 diabetes involved more than five insulin injections a day and finger sticks 10 or more times daily. This was a never-ending cycle of injections, estimation, and care, according to a licensed endocrinologist.
“Delivery devices superseded multiple daily insulin injections. With time, insulin pumps became less bulky and smarter, and eventually learned to ‘talk’ with the sensors,” the expert explained.
“Automated systems began adjusting insulin automatically, creating combined ‘artificial pancreas’ systems that lift some of the mental burden people with type 1 bear every day.”
Jonas is impressed with how far technology has improved since he was first identified.
“The fact that I can receive real time readings of my glucose directly on my phone or smart watch or it can be [shared with] my wife or other family members when I am apart from is just an amazing thing,” he said.
Alongside technology, new treatments aimed at controlling the condition and delaying or altering the disease itself are in development.
“The first immunotherapy capable of postponing type 1’s start was approved, and research into preserving or even substituting the body’s insulin-producing cells acquired real momentum. In labs around the world, scientists are growing stem-cell–derived pancreatic beta cells and experimenting with ways to protect them from immune attack,” the doctor continued.
“Responsive insulin” is also being engineered to activate only when blood sugar rises, offering a future where insulin works as naturally as the body once did.
“Further progress will definitely continue to emerge. We’re no longer just enhancing devices; we’re getting nearer to changing the disease itself,” the physician stated.
However, while a family physician agrees that further advancements will continue to appear, he points out that managing type 1 diabetes remains an intensive task — physically, cognitively, and psychologically.
“I sincerely hope that we’ll see more and more attention to talking about and addressing the burdens and the demands of having and controlling T1D. We need much more of that, too,” he commented.
The Singer Employs Self-Care to Control His Diabetes
In addition to medication and technology, Jonas shared some strategies he relies on to handle his diabetes.
To begin, he said he learned to take pressure off himself.
“You’re never going to have the ideal day living with this disease and even if you’re very diligent with your diabetes management, there are just things that are a little out of your control and being able to pause, reset, and know that it’s going to be OK on the other side is really important,” he said.
While this is difficult to do at times, he said he learned to apply this soon after his diagnosis.
Recently, he has focused on taking vitamins, looking after his skin, and staying hydrated.
“It’s a basic thing, but the more water I drink, my glucose levels are better. I don’t know exactly why, but I just find that drinking water has a lot of health benefits,” said Jonas. “I didn’t put as much focus on it earlier in my life as I do now, and it’s been really beneficial.”
He also walks daily for 30 minutes or longer for his physical, mental, and emotional health.
“It really grounds me and even when it’s cold out, getting out in the open air is really important when a lot of my day, too, is spent indoors for hours at a venue or on a film set or something,” he said.
He leans on his therapist frequently, too.
“I think it’s really important to do that self-work,” Jonas said.
Above all, he encourages everyone managing type 1 diabetes to take part in the diabetes community.
“There will be positive days, there will be tough days, but you can scale this mountain, and there’s some incredible people out there whose stories will really inspire anybody that’s going through tough moments,” he concluded.
