Health

Do you know the warning signs for a stroke? Would you recognize them in someone else? What about yourself? We often think if something like a stroke has occurred, we would realize it immediately, right? As it turns out, nearly 70 percent of people who have suffered a minor stroke don’t recognize the symptoms at all. Seeking medical treatment within the first three hours is critical to successful treatment. However, according to a study published in the journal Stroke, 30 percent of stroke patients wait more than 24 hours to contact their doctor or head to the emergency room.

How...

Rob Taylor was doing almost everything right.

For 15 years, the 59-year-old Bullard resident worked out in the gym at least three times a week with his personal trainer. He didn’t smoke and recently added playing in a senior softball league to his list of activities. Though he weighed around 250 pounds, Taylor carried it well on his six-foot frame.

Together with his wife and three children, the family kept up an active lifestyle and ate a “well-rounded, healthy diet” most of the time.

“However, about a third of the time,” recalled Taylor, “I didn’t eat very healthy...

Preventable, early deaths have happened too many times in Louis Ashley’s family.

“I’ve lost three of my four brothers,” said Ashley, a 51-year-old fluids engineer with a Texas oil company. “One drank himself to death, another died by suicide and one died in a car wreck. I suppose I’m the one who can change his lifestyle before it’s too late.”

Though he and his love Juliet live in Louisiana, Ashley has worked in Texas for 15 years on a 14 days on, 14 days off schedule. He designs the hydraulics and fluid systems that the company uses to pull oil out of the ground.

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For the Dixon household in Palestine, the day usually starts with mom, dad and their two kids getting dressed and heading out to work and school.

However, one morning in February, everyone left the house except mom, who wasn’t feeling well. Leah Dixon, 40, the chief operating officer of the UT Health East Texas Physicians Group, woke with symptoms of a sore throat and sinus congestion, so she decided to work from home.

Unfortunately, her symptoms got progressively worse during the morning. Leah decided to access UT Health East Texas...