Friday, June 27, 2008

Silent Strokes

This news is a bit scary if you are over 65.
Routine brain scans in a group of middle-aged people showed that 10 percent of them had suffered a stroke without knowing it, raising their risk for further strokes and memory loss, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

People with atrial fibrillation, the most common type of irregular heart beat in people over 65, had more than twice the rate of these silent strokes, they said.

Silent cerebral infarctions or SCIs are brain injuries caused by a blood clot that interrupts blood flow to the brain....

The researchers based their findings on routine magnetic resonance imaging or MRI scans from about 2,000 people with an average age of 62.

Full news article HERE

This is yet another finding coming from the Framingham study - a very long study that now includes the children of the original particpants. This finding is from those offspring and the researchers found that 10% had a stroke but HAD NO STROKE SYMPTOMS.

So how do you protect yourself? The study suggests "the need for early detection and treatment of cardiovascular risk factors in midlife."

There are many factors over which we have control in our lives and which can help us avoid or lessen the impact of those risk factors. The report does not go into this - but it is fairly well established that healthy eating and exercise are among those factors.

This is one good reason I tend to post about obesity, healthy eating, exercise and taking nutritional supplements.

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