His family announced that Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

Robertson’s family shared the news on the latest episode of their podcast, “Unashamed with The Robertson Family,” on Friday.

In the episode titled “Phil’s Diagnosis,” Phil’s son Jase Roberts described that dementia was in the “early stages.”

He also revealed that doctors had informed the family that his father also suffered from a blood disorder.

According to Jase, the 78-year-old reality star’s health is particularly fragile due to the blood disorder and his condition has worsened recently.

Al clarified that Phil had been struggling with the blood disorder for some time, but it had recently gotten worse.

Phil was noticeably absent from Friday’s podcast episode and Jase made it clear that his health was too poor for him to participate.

“He keeps saying, ‘I’m going to come back to the podcast,'” his son shared. “But I think, ‘Well, Phil, you can barely walk around without screaming in pain.'”

He added that he told his father, “You know, your memory ain’t what it used to be.”

Jase joked, to which Phil replied, “Tell me about it.”

Among Phil’s problems was that he was reportedly losing weight at an alarming rate despite eating “pretty well.”

“He just can’t maintain his weight, he’s constantly losing weight and he’s just not able to do much,” Jase added.

Lest Jase’s update make Phil’s condition seem too dire, his brother and co-host Al Robertson added that their father still mixed “good days” with “bad days.”

Al compared Phil’s battle with Alzheimer’s to that of former President Ronald Reagan, whose political philosophy and achievements had inspired him.

Reagan suffered from the same illness and he wrote a letter in 1994 informing the American public of his diagnosis.

Al recounted how moved he was when he saw the letter in person while visiting Reagan’s presidential library in California.

He noted that Phil had not made a similar statement about his illness, but he felt that his father had experienced a similar experience with the development of his dementia.

The segment ended with a strange digression from Jase, who recalled Phil’s days as a preacher and told a story in which he was inspired by his father’s criticism of transgender or gender non-conforming people, which he cited as an example of how perceptive the Patriarch used to be Sei.

Phil first gained fame as a quarterback for Louisiana Tech in the late 1960s, but chose to go into business rather than pursue a professional football career.

In 1972, he founded Duck Commander, a hunting and outdoor sporting goods company named after a popular duck calling product Robertson designed.

His company’s fame led to the creation of several hunting-themed TV shows in the 1980s, but his family gained new notoriety when they appeared on the A&E reality series Duck Dynasty in 2012.

In 2014, Robertson was briefly suspended from the series for comments he made to GQ in which he called homosexuality “sinful” and compared it to adultery and sodomy.

A&E condemned his comments but eventually relented after he issued a partial apology.

Duck Dynasty ended in 2017 after eleven seasons.