
When Neil Young was a child, he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, reports Biography. Also called "juvenile diabetes" because it's historically beset children, it's a hormonal disorder in which the body cannot regulate blood sugar because the pancreas doesn't make insulin, according to JRDF.
Young also suffered from epilepsy. While likely not his first seizure, one such episode in 1967 remains memorable for him. He was hanging out a radio festival called the Hollywood Teen Fair, when he suddenly found himself "on my back on the pavement," as he wrote in Waging Heavy Peace. "I was having fun, and you know, maybe I'd forgotten to eat or something, I don't know. And then I felt kind of sick to my stomach, and then I started to feel all weird and echoey, and then I fell down, and I don't really remember afterwards," Young said on NPR's Fresh Air.
He continued to suffer seizures, a telltale symptom of epilepsy, into the '70s, telling Rolling Stone in 1975 that he'd never had one while performing, because he "always left the stage" when he could feel one coming on. As of 2012, however, the rocker told NPR, "They don't happen anymore. I think I outgrew them."
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