{"id":154329,"date":"2026-02-06T22:53:36","date_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:53:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/154329\/"},"modified":"2026-02-06T22:53:36","modified_gmt":"2026-02-06T22:53:36","slug":"when-a-rare-disease-altered-his-future-he-built-a-stronger-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/154329\/","title":{"rendered":"When a rare disease altered his future, he built a stronger one"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) &#8212; Keaton Koy, 25, helps his clients grow stronger every day as a personal fitness trainer at <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.illuminate-fitness.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Illuminate Heights<\/a>, but looking at him, you wouldn&#8217;t know he does it all with limited vision. In his early 20&#8217;s, Koy was diagnosed with a rare genetic disorder, Leber&#8217;s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">&#8220;I remember going back into my car and just reading the paper they gave me about it and crying because I didn&#8217;t know what this meant for my life,&#8221; Koy shared with us.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">Koy was working to become a mechanic, but as that dream dimmed, another took shape. His friend introduced him to personal fitness.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">In the video above, hear from the gym owners who believed in him and how he is using his journey to motivate his clients.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Illuminate Heights is located at 630 w 6th Street in Houston.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) &#8212; Keaton Koy, 25, helps his clients grow stronger every day as a personal fitness&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154330,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[63784,40360,20272,1988,56,58,57,63782,63781,17990,25695,27357,63783,61108,25683],"class_list":["post-154329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-63784","tag-blind","tag-gym","tag-heights","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-illuminate-fitness","tag-keaton-koy","tag-loss","tag-personal","tag-purpose","tag-trainer","tag-vision","tag-workout"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}