Footballer talks about illness
“I live with it and don’t talk about it all the time”
Updated on April 11th, 2025 – 10:50 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.
Sandra Starke has already played football at the highest level when she learned about her illness. Seven years later, diabetes belongs to her everyday life as a player.
The Leipzig striker Sandra Stark has been affected by the metabolic disease diabetes mellitus type 1 since 2018. When she got the diagnosis, she was 24 years old. In the meantime, the 31-year-old has learned to deal with the disease-and continue to pursue high-performance sports.
In conversation with “Bild”, she explained: “I live with it and don’t talk about it all the time.” She also added: “Diabetes is a disease that can be used to live really well today.” The RB player has a sensor on the upper arm. This measures the sugar level. You can check the values via an app on the cell phone.
She can now assess her body very well. “I now know how my body reacts to a kebab or pasta and what I have to eat so that the blood sugar level remains stable during a soccer game,” said ex-Freiburg ace.
Shortly after the diagnosis, she didn’t know whether she could continue her career. “It was a big shock,” she recalls. But now she knows that a sporty career with the disease in which the body has a lack of hormone insulin is also possible.
It is not alone. The German tennis star Alexander Zverev also publicly made his diabetes-type 1 disease in 2022. He told the “Bild” newspaper at the time: “I felt uncomfortable with diabetes for a very long time. I was pretty much the only tennis player at a sports school. Children use everything to teasing you. That also played a role in psychologically.” He also emphasized again and again that he wanted to give people “courage”.