{"id":2546,"date":"2020-03-22T21:06:18","date_gmt":"2020-03-22T21:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=2546"},"modified":"2020-03-25T20:34:09","modified_gmt":"2020-03-25T20:34:09","slug":"kenny-rogers-the-gambler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/drmirkin.com\/?p=2546","title":{"rendered":"Kenny Rogers, The Gambler"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Kenny Rogers recorded 65 albums, sold more than 165 million records, was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame, and sang more than 120 hit singles that were the top recordings in the country for a total of more than 200 weeks.<\/p>\n

To be one of the best and most famous country music singers of all time, he probably had to:
\n\u2022 spend a lifetime being sleep deprived,
\n\u2022 spend many hours touring and sleeping in a bus,
\n\u2022 sing in smoke-filled rooms, and
\n\u2022 eat the food available on the road — the typical Western diet loaded with sugar, meat and fried foods.
\nHis typical musician\u2019s lifestyle brought him in contact with lots of women, and he was married five times. We do know from his autobiography that he avoided alcohol, which has felled many great popular singers. Rogers said that he watched his father self-destruct with drinking and vowed that would never happen to him.<\/p>\n

I have not seen his medical records, but the tabloids reported that Rogers spent the last several years of his life crippled with severe back pain and suffering liver damage from a 25-year battle with a viral infection called hepatitis C. He also was said to have diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, which increased his risk for heart damage, and dementia. He spent the last years of his life in a remote Georgia community to get away from public view, cancelled all his public tours and concerts, sold off his assets, said his last farewells and planned his own funeral. His family said that he died of natural causes while in hospice care, on March 20, 2020.
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