A blockage of the flow of oxygen-rich blood to a portion of the brain or a sudden bleeding in the brain can cause a stroke. Stroke caused by blockage is known as ischemic stroke and stroke caused by bleeding is called hemorrhagic stroke.
It is important to note that a stroke is a serious medical condition that needs immediate medical help because stroke could probably cause lasting brain damage, long-term disability or even death in some serious cases.
Being a leading cause of death and disability in the United States, stroke kills almost 130,000 Americans a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Every year, more than 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke.
A paper, which was appeared on June 6, 2013 in journal ‘Stroke”, showed that small improvements in cardiovascular risk factors can reduce the chances a person will suffer a stroke. The report was part of an ongoing national study called Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) that was funded by NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
In the study, researchers from Emory University, University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Vermont and Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta investigated the link between incidence stroke and the Life’s Simple 7 (LS7).
LS7 is a cardiovascular health score created by AHA in 2010 after identifying 7 critical risk factors as elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood glucose, obesity, current smoking, physical inactivity, and poor diet.
Each factor was scored as 0 (poor compliance), 1 (intermediate compliance), or 2 (ideal compliance), with resulting overall total scores grouped into 3 categories such that a score of 0-4 indicates poor cardiovascular health, 5-9 average health, and 10-14 represents optimal health.
Using the data collected from 30 239 blacks and whites, aged 45 and above, sampled from the US population from 2003 to 2007, the researchers found that an increase in even one point on the overall LS7 scorecard reduced the chances a person would have a stroke within 5 years by 8 percent and an improvement in one category, for example from average to optimal, reduced the chances by 25 percent. The results applied to white and black participants equally.
To meet LS7 measures, one should follow the 7 things about oneself, namely: never smoked or quit more than a year ago, having a BMI (body mass index) of less than 25 kg/m2, exercising at a moderate level for at least 150 minutes, or at an intense level for 75 minutes per week, meeting 4 to 5 of the key components of a healthy diet in line with current AHA guidelines, having a total cholesterol of less than 200 mg/dL, blood pressure below 120/80 mmHg, and fasting blood glucose below 100 mg/dL.
No comments:
Post a Comment