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 Previous studies have identified individual risk factors for stroke.
The authors of the new report used a model based on data from almost
24,000 people to determine how having an overall healthy lifestyle
might affect the risk of a first-time stroke.
“Our combined risk factor analysis indicated that about 38 percent
of primary stroke occurrences could have been prevented in our study
population if all study participants had maintained the healthiest
risk profile,” Kaja Tikk from the German Cancer Research Centre in
Heidelberg and colleagues write.
That was defined by the authors as never smoking, maintaining an
optimal weight and waist circumference, exercising, consuming a
moderate amount of alcohol and following a healthy diet.
Close to 800,000 people in the United States have a stroke each
year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Tikk’s team analyzed data from a large European study that began in
1994. The 23,927 participants filled out questionnaires about their
health and lifestyle and the researchers tracked them for
approximately 13 years. During that time, 551 had a first stroke.
By analyzing each person’s stroke-related risk factors, the
researchers estimated that following an overall healthy lifestyle
would reduce the number of strokes from 153 to 94 per 100,000 women
between age 60 and 65 and from 261 to 161 per 100,000 men during the
same period.
Not all risk factors appeared to have an equal impact on stroke
prevention, based on a model built by the authors.
They said the two strongest lifestyle-related risk factors were
smoking and excess body weight.
“Being a former smoker was not associated with stroke risk, showing
that cessation of smoking is effective in stroke prevention,” the
researchers write in the journal Stroke.
They also found that heavy drinking was linked to a higher risk of
stroke among men, but not necessarily among women. No protection
appeared to be associated with light drinking, contrary to the
results of previous studies.
The findings can’t prove certain health and lifestyle factors were
responsible for increasing stroke risk. They just show strokes were
more common among people with those habits and characteristics.
Dr. Daniel Labovitz believes this is still a strong study because
the authors were able to look at multiple risk factors at once.
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“This pulled together lots of healthy lifestyle behaviors and looked
at them all at the same time in a way which we haven't been able to
do before,” Labovitz told Reuters Health.
He directs the Stern Stroke Center at Montefiore Medical Center in
Bronx, New York and was not part of the new study.
“I especially liked it because there was no pill involved here, it's
just about doing what your mom would say was good for you: get your
exercise, eat properly, don't get too fat,” he said. “That’s
essentially what it added up to and boy did it ever pay off. That's
a bigger difference than we can generate with any single pill that I
can give for stroke prevention.”
Labovitz said most people don’t realize that a stroke is a blood
vessel problem just like a heart attack, so the risk factors and
preventive measures are essentially the same.
“Basically what we're talking about here is stroke that is caused by
blockage or bursting of a blood vessel, and that's exactly what the
heart doctors have been talking about all these years,” he said.
During a heart attack, “blood vessels don't burst but they certainly
do get blocked.”
Labovitz added that exercising, following a Mediterranean-style or
DASH-style diet - which is rich in nutrients and protein but lower
in saturated fat and salt - and not smoking all help prevent both
heart attacks and strokes.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/UzkEJi
Stroke, online May 29, 2014.
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