Important advice: Listen to your doctor

Many stroke patients stop taking meds, study shows:

In one report, researchers found that 25 percent of stroke patients stopped taking one or more of their stroke prevention medications within three months after their stroke.

"Providers should spend more time teaching stroke patients and caregivers when new risk factors are diagnosed and new medications are prescribed, such as blood pressure or cholesterol medications prior to discharge, while keeping the regimen as streamlined as possible," said lead researcher Dr. Cheryl D. Bushnell, an associate professor of neurology and associate director of the Women's Health Center of Excellence at Wake Forest University Health Sciences.

 While not in every instance, so many strokes can be prevented - often if the patients would follow a doctor's instructions. I'm as stubborn as the next patient, so it's taken me years to concede that 99 percent of the time, the doctor knows best.