Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre said during a congressional hearing Tuesday that he has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.

Favre said during the hearing on Social Security accountability that he lost his investment in a company he believed was developing a breakthrough drug to treat concussions.

“Although it is too late for me – having recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s – this is also a cause close to my heart,” he said.

Favre played 20 seasons in the NFL, most of them with the Green Bay Packers, with whom he won the Super Bowl in 1997. The 54-year-old, who retired from football after the 2010 season, has said he may have suffered more than 1,000 concussions during his playing career.

“If you have ringing in your ears, or you see stars, that’s a concussion,” Favre told the Today Show in 2018. “And if that’s a concussion, I’ve had hundreds, maybe thousands of them in my career, and it’s scary.”

Parkinson’s, a degenerative neurological disease that affects movement and can cause tremors, speech problems and poor balance, has been linked to concussions. According to a 2020 study published in the Family Medicine and Community Health Journal, a single concussion can increase the risk of Parkinson’s by 57%. Concussions have also been linked to other conditions, such as CTE. CTE, which can only be definitively diagnosed at autopsy, is a neurodegenerative disorder linked to repeated head trauma. Symptoms experienced throughout life include cognitive impairment, impulsive behavior, depression, suicidal thoughts, short-term memory loss and emotional instability.

Favre is one of several defendants named in a 2022 civil lawsuit filed by Mississippi’s Department of Human Services alleging misuse of welfare funds earmarked for the state’s neediest families under the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. He has never been charged with any crimes related to the funds.

“The challenges that my family and I have faced over the past three years — as certain Mississippi government officials failed to protect federal TANF funds from fraud and abuse, and unfairly tried to blame me for them — those challenges have damaged my reputation and are worse than anything I’ve ever experienced in football,” Favre said during Tuesday’s hearing, where Republicans called for reforms to the federal welfare system to better prevent fraud.

Favre said he was unaware that the payments he received came from welfare funds, and said his charity had donated millions of dollars to poor children in his home state of Mississippi and in Wisconsin, where he played for the Packers.