Want to Prevent a Stroke? Consider This

Stroke is a leading cause of long-term disability and the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. Self-reported incidents of stroke increased 14.6% among people ages 18 to 44 and about 15.7% among people ages 45 to 64 from 2011-2013 to 2020-2022.

Granted the rates of hypertension and obesity, risk factors of stroke, have increased in both youth and middle aged adults.

Depression Increases Your Risk

There is strong evidence that strong evidence that depression is associated with increased risks of total stoke, fatal stroke, and ischemic stroke from decrease blood flow within the brain.¹ In a systematic review and a meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies consisting 317,540 participants, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health studied the association between depression and risk of total and subtypes of stroke participants. Pooled analysis showed that depression was associated with:(2)

• 45 percent increased risk for total stroke
• 55 percent increased risk for fatal stroke
• 25 percent increased risk for strokes resulting from when the blood supply to a portion of brain has been interrupted or obstructed.

It should be noted that depressed individuals often have difficulty in incorporating good lifestyle practices. Also depression increases the risk for undesirable clotting by increasing platelet stickiness. Unfortunately, it also substantially reduces blood flow to the front brain.

A Positive Attitude Helps

After controlling for many probable confounders, a Finnish study showed that individuals who had less dispositional pessimism had a 48% less risk of stroke compared to those who had high levels of pessimism.²

Optimism protects against stroke. Researchers from the University of Michigan looked at the results of standard optimism tests for 6,044 men and women. All were free of stroke at the study’s start. The optimism score was on a 16-point scale. After adjusting for age, each unit increase in their optimism score reduced stroke risk about 9 percent. Even when the researchers also adjusted for other factors such as smoking, alcohol use, race, gender, hypertension, mental illness, body mass index, and level of physical activity, the association between optimism and reduced risk of stroke remained robust.(4) By cultivating gratitude and focusing on life’s positives, we encourage optimism.

Prehypertension, high blood pressure, diabetes, elevated cholesterol, and elevated triglycerides also increase one’s risk for stroke. The good news is that the Wildwood Lifestyle Center has winning strategies to help these conditions and thus reduce your risk for stroke.

People Need Good People

Researchers have found that risk for stroke, according to sing 2006-2018 data from the Health and Retirement Study, that participants who experiences chronic loneliness had a 56% greater stroke risk than those individuals who did not report chronic loneliness. This same study showed that individuals who experienced loneliness one time had a 25% increased risk of stroke.³

Work Cited

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/wr/mm7320a1.htm?s_cid=mm7320a1_w

1. Pan A., et al, Depression and the Risk of Stroke Morbidity and Mortality: A Meta-analysis and Systematic Review. JAMA 2011, Sept. 21, 306 (11), 1241-1249 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3242806/[↩]
2. Herman N., et al., Low pessimism protects against stroke: the Health and Social Support (HeSSup) prospective cohort study, Stroke 2010, January 41(1), 189-190, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2884028/  [↩]
3. Soh Y., et al., Chronic loneliness and the risk of incident stroke in middle and late adulthood: a longitudinal cohort study of U.S. older adults, Lancet vol. 73, 102639, July 2024      https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(24)00218-9/fulltext[↩]