Insider's View: Bobby Labonte

Obviously, it's difficult to remedy any problem until a professional accurately diagnoses it. Believe me, I know.

When I went to drive for Bill Davis in 1994, we were losing our sponsor, we were on the verge of trying to find out what to do for the next year, we had no potential sponsors and weren't sure we'd even be able to field a ride.

Throughout the ordeal, I'd begun to lose some weight, but I didn't feel like it was much cause for concern and wrote it off to stress.

	Bobby Labonte

I had plenty of stress, too. I was busy driving a Busch car, plus the Cup situation and I was just trying to do what I thought was way too many things and figured that was the reason behind my weight loss.

Well, after I signed with Joe Gibbs to drive the 18, we went to test Texas Motor Speedway and I got up one morning and just couldn't get out of bed. I was exhausted and simply couldn't get up.

So I said, well, I guess I just have a real bad cold. But I got home and still wasn't feeling well and I kept losing weight. I got down to about 140 pounds, man.

When Christmas Day came around, I couldn't even move. Getting out of bed wasn't even an option. It had gotten worse and worse, to the point where I didn't want to move. So I talked to my wife, and decided something had to be really wrong and I had to do something about it.

I went to one doctor, who told me what I had. I went to another doctor, and that guy said it would be a couple months before I could get things going again. Finally, after several trips to several doctors, they determined it was Graves Disease, a thyroid disorder.

So when January came, we were down in Daytona testing with Gibbs, and I went to the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville. When I got there, I took a radiation treatment and killed my thyroid gland.

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Now, I have to take a pill every day to supplement that. After that, I went from 30, 31 years old and 145 pounds to, by about April or May, about 180 pounds.

I was like, 'Whoa. What's going on here?' Dude, I thought I was on a diet when I was sick, but I really wasn't, I was just losing weight because of the thyroid disorder. Luckily, though, I've now gotten my diet and disorder all in check, and I'm in the best health of my life. I still have asthma, though.

I've had asthma basically all my life, and it gets triggered really badly when my allergies kick in -- like right now, so when ADVAIR came to talk to us I was obviously interested.

I was already leaning toward that medication anyway, and they knew I had asthma, so not only do they sponsor a racecar but they also have a pupil that has the same problem they're trying to promote.

With the ADVAIR deal, we really wanted to find some way to help other people at the track. So along with me driving a special purple car this weekend at Bristol, they're also bringing a trailer to the racetrack to check breathing and answer any questions people may have about asthma and respiratory health.

It allows people to walk in off the street and receive help for a problem that they may not know they have, or realize what a big problem it really is.

I think it's great, and I think in the future you may see more of these types of sponsorships, with personal health becoming such a big deal in today's society. It seems like a great way to advertise. A lot of people show up there and get screened for various ailments. It's just a great way to help people out.

Like I said, it's tough to fix a problem if you don't know you have it. We want to be sure you know you have the opportunity to know you have it.