TIA – Lifestyle Effects

Transcript

The lifestyle changes that are associated or that we have to sort of pay attention to with TIA are really specific to the fact that the TIA was a stroke that could have happened and it didn’t. And so all the workup is trying to identify the risk factors that pertain to you. Again, is it a high blood pressure? Is it diabetes? Is it smoking? Is it physical activity? Is it medication changes that need to be made? Adding a statin? Taking blood thinners? Whatever they are, those need to be instituted in your life. This is one chance you have to prevent the stroke that could happen. And keep in mind we’re doing a really good job at preventing death from stroke. It’s gone from the third leading cause of death to the fourth leading cause of death to the fifth leading cause of death. But it is still the leading cause of long-term disability and there are fates worse than death. The TIA is your second chance and the lifestyle changes that you make after your TIA will have the biggest effect on whether or not you have a stroke. Now keep in mind that lifestyle changes, like we talked about, those risk factors that we talked about, they have a huge effect on your risk of future stroke. I point out over and over again, 8 out of every 10 strokes and heart attacks are preventable. If you can institute these things into your daily life. And again, today is your chance to make that change before the big stroke happens.