Simple Precautions Can Help Prevent Strokes

By: Jean Johnson for Heart1

If there was ever a feared medical event, it’s a stroke. There may be no surrendering to death like in cancer or heart attacks, but full recovery is iffy. Indeed, in an instant a stroke can turn an active life on its head. Before someone knows what’s happened, they can find themselves as a patient with a range of symptoms including seriously-impaired mobility, speech and vision. In short, down for the count.

“I was just walking across the living when the stroke hit me,” said stroke survivor who is currently in rehabilitation, Lowell Fetzer. “No one was home so I just had to lay there. I was so angry because I knew it was serious. I remember pounding the floor over and over again with my good fist, trying to will it away.”

Just what a person wants to do in their golden years, get stopped in their tracks by a stroke. Research, though, increasingly shows how those willing to go the distance can hedge their bets.

Anger and other strong emotions are connected to strokes – the old “don’t blow a gasket” or the new “chill out” is right on the money according to lead researcher from Israel Center for Disease Control, Silvia Koton, M.D. In a 2004 study, Koton found that, especially in those 69 and younger, anger or other “overwhelming emotions” occurred during the two-hour window before strokes in 43 patients out of 200, and that six patients had similar emotive experiences the day before their strokes. If Koton’s results are correct, one step to take in protection from strokes is practicing deep breathing or whatever means a person may use to keep their emotions from running amuck.

Another step, if you’re a female between 45 and 65, is taking an aspirin every other day. A blind Women’s Health Study followed 40,000 participants, half of whom took 100 milligrams of aspirin every other day. Although the study focused on heart attacks, in the 20,000 women between age 45 and 65, those who took the aspirin had a 17 percent lower risk for stroke, researchers found. “What was really surprising and not anticipated was this gender difference,” said Director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, Elizabeth G. Nabel, M.D. Then of course, no matter what the gender, there is the usual urging to limit alcohol and smoking, eat right, and take a stroll around the neighborhood. Not to mention trying some quiet meditation in place of an evening in front of the television – all the usual lifestyle changes that require not only developing new habits, but also finding room for them in already full schedules.

Nonetheless, as the saying goes; “it ain’t finished until the countin’s done.” So those who make time for a little stroke prevention now could thank themselves later on down the road.