stroke risk

Working Long Hours Increases Your Risk of Stroke by 45 Percent

June 21, 2019 By Amanda Blankenship Leave a Comment

The average American works between 47 and 50 hours per week (that’s seven to 10 hours of overtime regularly). Of course, the extra cash may be nice and your salary may seem worth it. But what is working long hours doing to your health?

What Working Long Hours is Doing to Your Health

The video above talks about 42-year-old Jeff Hiserodt. Hiserodt was working upwards of 60 to 65 hours per week until he had a stroke. The entire left side of his body went numb. A new study from the American Heart Association took a look at how working long hours and your risk of stroke.

Findings showed people who spend 10 or more years working long hours have a 45 percent higher risk of stroke. For those under the age of 50, the association between the two seemed even stronger.

For the study, researchers defined “long hours” as working 10 or more hours a day more than 50 days per year. Considering the average American is working a 50-hour week, that is alarming. However, Dr. Arbi Ohanian doesn’t believe it is cause for concern.

Ohanian believes that you can’t simply tell someone to stop working because their work is stressful. Almost every job is stressful. It is more about defining what is “too much.”

“The type of work that you do, I’m sure factors into this. The type of lifestyle that you have also factors into this,” said Ohanian.

Best Ways to Prevent Stroke

Working long days is common among many Americans just to make ends meet. That isn’t likely to change any time soon. Instead, doctors point out some of the easier, more obtainable preventative measures.

For instance, if you smoke, quitting would help prevent stroke. Other preventative measures include healthy eating, regular exercise, and visiting your doctor on a regular basis for checkups. It is also important that any current health conditions you may have don’t go unchecked (i.e. high blood pressure, cholesterol, cardiac issues, etc).

Another thing you need to make a priority to decrease your risk of stroke is stress management. Finding better ways to manage stress in your life can make all the difference. Take time out of your day to do yoga, read, and unwind.

Hiserodt quoted stress management as his key to success in recovering from his stroke. “I take the time out to go to a nice painting class with my friends at my stroke group,” he said, “I work out. I ride my bike. I changed my whole life. I don’t want to take for granted the second chance that I’ve been given.”

Strokes kill more than 140,000 Americans every year, costing the United States $34 billion per year. Finding ways to prevent strokes early on could be key in decreasing these numbers.

Your Diet Drinks Are Increasing Your Risk of Stroke

February 25, 2019 By Amanda Blankenship Leave a Comment

Exchanging diet drinks for high-sugar soda seems like a no-brainer, especially if you’re dieting. Why waste the calories (and ingest all that additional sugar) for no reason? Health officials have been wary of diet soda and other similar beverages for some time. Now, new research has shown women who drink a lot of diet beverages have an increased risk of stroke.

Avoid Having Two or More Diet Drinks a Day

For the purposes of the study, researchers defined “a lot” of diet drinks as two or more per day. Women who claimed to drink at least two artificially sweetened beverages per day were found to be 31 percent more likely to have an ischemic stroke. For African American women and women who are obese, those chances double.

An ischemic stroke is the most common type of stroke and is typically caused by a blood clot. The chances of individuals having this type of stroke more than doubled if they consumed high levels of diet drinks.

The findings were derived from health data from over 12 years and included more than 81,000 women, ages 50+. Researchers compared the health status of women who drank two diet sodas or fruit drinks a day to individuals who drank those types of beverages once a week (or not at all).

What they found is the high consumption of diet drinks came with increased health risks, not just an increased risk of stroke. Women who consumed high numbers of diet beverages were shown to have a 29 percent higher risk of heart disease. Researchers also found they are 16 percent more likely to die earlier than others.

Diet Drink Alternatives

Although the study did not specify which artificial sweeteners the drinks contained, it is safe to say you should probably avoid them altogether. The American Heart Association suggests that the best no-calorie drink you can consume is water (plain, flavored, or carbonated). As long as it is unsweetened, it is the best choice for a diet drink.

Because all of the participants involved were 50+, it is unclear as to whether the findings would apply to everyone. However, regardless of your age, it is probably a good idea to steer clear of artificial sweeteners.

Readers, how often do you consume diet drinks? Are you concerned about these findings?

The Mediterranean Diet May Help Cut the Risk of Strokes

February 15, 2015 By Lilian Nwa 8 Comments

The Mediterranean Diet may help reduce stroke risks

Strokes are life-threatening medical emergencies that occur when the brain experiences a disturbance in its blood supply. Because the affected area of the brain can no longer function due to oxygen deprivation, symptoms often include the inability to move one (or both) side(s) of the body, understand spoken language or other neurological impairments, which can result in permanent brain damage. Beyond disability, researchers at the World Health Organization (WHO) have found that strokes are the second leading cause of deaths worldwide.

Nevertheless, a recent study conducted at the Columbia University Medical Center by lead author Ayesha Sherzai and her colleagues suggest that individuals following a Mediterranean diet might decrease their risk of ischemic stroke by 18 percent. Previous studies have suggested the diet may extend life and help prevent heart disease. It’s also considered one of the better overall diets.

According to WebMD, a Mediterranean diet includes many fruits and vegetables, whole grains, fish, nuts, legumes, poultry and olive oil, while limiting the consumption of red meat, saturated fats (as seen in red meats, butter and “full-fat dairy”) and sweets.

Though this research does not prove following a non-Mediterranean diet will lead to a greater chance of experiencing a stroke, Dr. Paul Wright, chair of neurology at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, N.Y. told WebMD, “Overall, there is strong evidence, based on this study, that strict adherence to a Mediterranean diet significantly reduces stroke risk.”

Sherzai and her colleagues used data from the ongoing California Teachers Study (CTS) to arrive at their conclusions. The CTS has enrolled over 130,500 female teachers since 1994 and was initially designed to study how dietary patterns affect the risk of developing breast cancer. Sherzai and her colleagues used the data and a validated 9-point Mediterranean diet scoring system to determine that women whose diets were high in fruits and vegetables, also scored highest on the 9-point scale, which meant facing reduced risk of stroke.

Sherzai also found that other factors such as smoking habits, physical activity and cardiovascular risk could also reduce the threat of ischemic stroke in the lives of these women.

This finding is especially important because, as Sherzai said in a statement, “[stroke] treatments [are not] as extensive as we would like them to be, [so] diet is a risk factor that people can control.” Unfortunately, though the American Heart and Stoke Associations have for some time encouraged people to consume a healthy diet to reduce the risks of heart disease, according to Sherzai, only 1 percent of people over 50 years old are actually eating healthy.

Though Sherzai has said she is not encouraging people to follow a Mediterranean diet exclusively, incorporating more of the hallmarks of this diet plan (vegetables, fruits, legumes/nuts, etc.) might serve toward improving an individual’s health and decreasing his or her risk of stroke.

(Photo courtesy of Meal Makeover Moms)