Stroke – Modifiable Risk Factors

Transcript

Other risk factors for stroke. Interestingly, there’s, there are, there are the modifiable risk factors and things sort of non modifiable risk factors and there’s a nice way to sort of differentiate what things that you have control over and things you don’t have control over. So a couple more modifiable risk factors that you have control over. Smoking the number one preventable cause of death in the entire world. Smoking. And from my perspective, one less cigarette a day is a victory. Ideally we get everyone to stop smoking completely. Physical inactivity. I talked about it before. It’s important in controlling blood pressure. It helps control cholesterol, it will help with blood sugar and diabetes. But it also helps the brain in other ways promoting good blood flow, amongst other things. And again, what I recommend is 30 minutes, at least four to five times a week of moderate intensity exercise. This is what the American Heart and Stroke Association recommends as well. Then the next modifiable risk factor is obesity. It goes hand in hand with everything else we just talked about. But obesity is an epidemic in the United States. More than 60% of adults are classified as obese. And so whether this is, you know, a combination of not being active enough, diet, and whatever it takes, we need to sort of pay attention to that as a risk factor and address it in any way that we can.