It may be the year 2025, but singer Robbie Williams said he contracted “a 17th-century pirate disease” — scurvy.

Williams said he was having challenges with his mental health and used an appetite suppressant to lose weight.

He said he had body dysmorphia and used the medication to shed weight.

“With body dysmorphia, when people say they’re worried about how you’re looking, you’re like: ‘I’ve achieved it.’ When people say: ‘we’re worried you’re too thin’ that goes into my head as ‘jackpot. I’ve reached the promised land.‘”

He said, “I’d stop eating and I wasn’t getting nutrients.” He lost about 28 pounds.

But that caused him to have a major vitamin C deficiency, or an illness called scurvy.

Scurvy is not common thanks to modern health and nutrition available, but during the age of pirates, sailors would be at sea for so long and would have limited or no access to fresh fruit and vegetables.

It still happens, however, in areas where people are malnourished. It can also be present in people who are undergoing chemotherapy, who have an eating disorder or who have a restrictive diet.

Symptoms include:

• Irritability
• Weakness
• Fatigue
• Joint pain
• Rough, scaly skin
• Easily bruised or bleeding
• Loose teeth
• Swollen legs
• Dry, brittle hair
• Anemia
• Swollen, bleeding gums
• Wounds reopen or don’t heal

Williams, 51, said he had struggled with depression about 10 years ago. This time it wasn’t anything specific like family or a tour that plunged him to the depths.

“My wife would say, ‘If your depression could talk, what would it say?’ It wasn’t saying, ‘It’s my mum, or dad, or your mum,‘” he shared. “It wasn’t saying, ‘It’s life, or tickets or the tour or the pressure or whatever.’ None of that. It just is. It’s just a pervasive feeling.”

He said that depression "can be overpowering. There are elements of putting your head in the sand and putting your fingers in your ears and going, La La La.”

Williams said that once he changed his diet, his depression lifted.

He will be going on tour in May across the U.K., Ireland and Europe.

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