Diabetes is the usual cause of a stroke and/or heart attack. Diabetes is an extremely insidious disease that is often overlooked or ignored. Familiarize yourself with it.
I've been familiarizing myself with it for 25 years, and take four pills daily and a weekly shot to try and keep my A1C in single digits, and four more pills a day to keep the numbness and burning pain of diabetic neuropathy at a manageable level. Everyone on my mother's side of the family had it and the doctors determined that mine's simply hereditary. So, my diabetic neuropathy and I are intimately familiar with the disease. It's no picnic. And at times, quite depressing.