Ahman Green, the rushing leader for the Green Bay Packers, has announced he has Parkinson’s disease.
The 49-year-old told the ‘Go Long with Tyler Dunne’ podcast that he was diagnosed early in January 2025 but had kept the news to friends and close family until now.
He said: “I had a little bit of the feet twitching when I’m in my sleep and stuff like that. I mean, I knew something was going on long before that. I just got a hold of some doctors [and] was able to get in contact with and get the diagnostics, get the testing and finally got it tested.”
Having admitted his short-term memory was “trash”, he added: “I’ve got to remind myself of things. When I meet somebody for the first time, it’s like a name, I hear that name, then I repeat it. I try to repeat it or write it down. And if I don’t, I’ve got to follow up with them.”
Green facing Parkinson’s battle head on
Green, who ran for 8,322 yards across two stints with the Packers and also holds team records for rushing yards in a season with 1,883 in 2003 and rushing yards in a game (218 against the Broncos in 2003), also played for the Seattle Seahawks and the Houston Texans in an 11-year NFL career.
And he is confident he will be able to live with the disease for as long as possible.
“I got the reins,” he added. “I’m in control. I’m not going to let this control me. There is some medicines that I’ve been taking from the doctor’s side of it, so I made sure [to stay] on my protocol there but on my side, the food is my medicine.
“I’m ahead of it right now. For the doctors that examine me, they said really, if they didn’t know what they knew about the early signs, they would have thought I was in great [shape] … until they really sat me down, between taking my vitals to having me walk in front of them and what they saw in my walk, in my gait and the way my shoulders hang.”
