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Although it's already been detected in 2006, it has become more prevalent today.

Dystextia is a medical phenomenon characterized by garbled text messaging as the user may be experiencing the early warning signs of stroke.

It's human nature to commit mistakes when typing our text messages, especially if you have very big thumbs that can hardly hit the correct keys or you've become too dependent with autocorrect. However, if the succeeding texts turn out to be gibberish, these may be more than human error.


So far, four people have experienced dystextia. One of the latest cases involved a woman who had been sending incomprehensible text messages to her son. The full case can now be read in the British Medical Journal.

Doctors cannot not really pinpoint the main reason for dystextia, but given that it shares similarities with writing in longhand, it's possible that different sections of the brain may be malfunctioning, including those that regulate motor skills. You need these skills in order to hold the cell phone properly and type your texts, among others.

Nevertheless, these types of cases are still considered odd. For instance, in one of the earliest cases, a pregnant woman was diagnosed as having signs of stroke by sending weird and hardly understandable text messages to her husband-this, even if she didn't have any speech problem, which is very common among those who are suffering from stroke. Other possible symptoms are dizziness, loss of balance, weakness, and confusion.

Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, and paying attention to the early signs can spell the difference between succumbing to it and being given another lease in life.

These text messages can be very helpful in stroke treatment since the doctors can evaluate the possible start of the symptoms by looking into the time stamps.