- Lead singer Nick Jonas has been living with type 1 diabetes for 20 years.
- The Jonas Brothers band “JONAS20: Greetings from Your Hometown Tour” celebrates its 20th anniversary alongside Nick Jonas’s 20-year journey with diabetes.
- Nick Jonas shares how both milestones have impacted his life and how he uses his music to raise awareness for type 1 diabetes.
This year, the number 20 holds special significance for iconic singer Nick Jonas.
As the Jonas Brothers celebrate their 20th year as a band, 2025 also marks 20 years since their lead singer’s type 1 diabetes diagnosis.
“It’s crazy how it lined up,” Jonas told Healthline. “It’s been a wild journey in both… in the Brothers sense, it’s been the ride of a lifetime, and we’ve been so fortunate 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 great and tough moments living with diabetes. The struggles of managing his condition have been the lows, while advocating and connecting with others as a spokesperson for Dexcom and through his non-profit, Beyond Type 1, have brought him joy.
“Overall, I’m really grateful to have been able to be transparent about [type 1] and to connect with all these wonderful people from all regions of the world who are experiencing their own diabetes journey, and it’s a really big thing to feel like you’re a little less alone in it,” said Jonas.
To thank his fans, on World Diabetes Day (November 14), he took to the stage during a Jonas Brothers concert and surprised his audience by sharing an inspiring message of hope, accompanied by a shout-out to his A1C.
“My A1C, which is a collection of numbers over a three-month period, was the best it’s ever been, actually, most recently,” said Jonas.
The show was attended by members of the Dexcom Warrior community — a group of more than 30,000 people globally who share their experiences with diabetes to help spread a message of strength, perseverance, and optimism.
“It was really special for me to get to use the Jonas Brothers’ platform as a place to speak about something that’s obviously very personal to me and on World Diabetes Day, I think it’s natural to get reflective and to tap into kind of what life looks like for me as a now 33-year-old person living with this disease,” he said.
Jonas dedicated the song “A Little Bit Longer” — a tune he wrote early in his career and diabetes journey, to those living with 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 impact 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 lifted me up in so many different moments. I think my outlook is perhaps a lot more positive now. It is possible to live a big, busy life while living with this disease and outlook and perspective and all that is an important piece to powering through.”
Not long ago, life with type 1 diabetes meant more than five insulin injections a day and finger sticks 10 or more times daily. This was a constant cycle of needles, guesswork, and vigilance, said Victoria Finn, MD, board certified endocrinologist with Medical Offices of Manhattan and Labfinder.com contributor.
“Insulin pumps replaced multiple daily insulin injections. With time, insulin pumps became lighter and smarter, and eventually learned to ‘talk’ with the glucose monitors,” Finn told Healthline.
“Algorithms began adjusting insulin automatically, creating hybrid ‘artificial pancreas’ systems that lift some of the mental burden people with type 1 carry every day.”
Jonas is impressed with how far technology has improved since he was first diagnosed.
“The fact that I can receive real time readings of my glucose straight to my phone or smart watch or it can be [shared with] my wife or other family members who I’m traveling away from that’s just an amazing thing,” he said.
In addition to technology, new treatments aimed at managing diabetes and slowing or altering the disease itself are in development.
“The first immune-therapy capable of delaying type 1’s onset was approved, and research into preserving or even replacing the body’s insulin-producing cells gained 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,” said Finn.
“Smart insulin” is also being engineered to activate only when blood sugar rises, promising a future where insulin works as intuitively as the body once did.
“More advancements will absolutely continue to develop. We’re no longer just improving tools; we’re getting closer to changing the disease itself,” Finn said.
However, while Sean Oser, MD, a family physician and member of the American Academy of Family Physicians, agrees that further advancements will continue to develop, he notes that managing type 1 diabetes remains an intensive undertaking — physically, cognitively, and emotionally.
“I sincerely hope that we’ll see more and more attention to talking about and helping with the burdens and the demands of living with and managing T1D. We need far more of that, too,” he told Healthline.
In addition to medication and technology, Jonas shared some strategies he leans on to manage his diabetes.
First, he said he learned to take pressure off himself.
“You’re never going to have the perfect day living with this disease and even if you’re super on top of your diabetes management, there are just things that are a little out of your control and being able to take a deep breath, reset, and know that it’s going to be OK on the other side is really important,” he said.
While this is hard to do at times, he said he learned to practice this early during his diagnosis.
Recently, he has focused on taking vitamins, caring for his skin, and staying hydrated.
“It’s a simple thing, but the more water I drink, my glucose levels are better. I don’t know exactly why, but I just find that hydrating 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 centers me and even when it’s cold out, getting out in the fresh air is really important when a lot of my day too, is spent indoors for hours at venue or on a film set or something,” he said.
He leans on his therapist regularly, too.
“I think it’s really important to do that self-work,” Jonas said.
Most of all, he encourages everyone living with type 1 diabetes to take part in the diabetes community.
“There will be good days, there will be tough days, but you can climb this mountain, and there’s some incredible people out there whose stories will really inspire anybody that’s going through tough moments,” said Jonas.
