Health

Focusing on keeping your heart healthy is a good way to make sure you stay healthy overall, as good practices for your heart involve everything from sleep to diet to regular checkups. Since heart disease is the leading cause of death in both men and women, taking care to incorporate good habits will benefit you your whole life.

Start by Giving Up the Bad

A lot of daily activities can affect our hearts, but it can be hard to start new habits even if we know how good they will be for us in the long run. If you do find it difficult to pick up new...

A big part of staying healthy overall is making sure your heart is taken care of. If your heart is looked after through a commitment to a low sodium, low fat diet and stimulated with enough invigorating exercise, you’ll feel the benefits throughout your entire body. Of course, it’s also important to have your physician check your blood pressure and cholesterol regularly, but what about other tests? To get a complete picture of your heart’s health and your potential risk for heart disease, UT Health has bundled seven tests together in the MyHeart First program.

MyHeart First is...

Bob Robinson and his wife, Sherry, moved backed to East Texas and now enjoy spending time at their lake house and with their 6-year-old grandson. However, in 2010, Bob started to feel extremely fatigued and overall less-than stellar, which led him to speak to his primary care physician. The results came back, giving him a life-changing diagnosis.

Bob was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes. Diabetes is a lifelong disease that affects the way your body handles glucose, a kind of sugar, in your blood. People with type 2 diabetes make insulin, but their cells don't use it as well as they...

Last year, at age 68, Steve Skommesa and his wife, Susan, relocated to East Texas. They did all the normal things you do when you move like forward your mail, meet the neighbors and find the closest grocery store, but he also set up an appointment with his new UT Health primary care physician’s assistant, Tony Jameson.

After doing a routine physical, Jameson saw that Steve’s cholesterol level was a bit elevated and suggested a next step. “He asked if I had 150 dollars,” Steve recalls. “Then he said I should take...