A huge study of 2040 people from the US (it’s an update of the famous ongoing Framingham, Mass. study in which the residents of the town of Framingham and their descendants have had their health analyzed and re-analyzed and re-analyzed since 1948) has determined that, based on MRI scans, nearly 11 % of otherwise health adults in middle age have had “silent” strokes, meaning that they have had a blockage to part of the brain (the most common form of stroke), yet those people have had no evident stroke symptoms (that’s the silent bit). That doesn’t mean, however, that these people got off scot-free. Further testing has determined that at the very least most of these people have also suffered subtle cognitive damage as a result of their silent stroke, problems such as subtle speech changes, not to mention, of course, that such folks are also presumably at much higher risk (without knowing it) of suffering a full-fledged stroke with all its attendant complications. This study was published in the journal, Stroke: a Journal of the American Heart Association. Factors that raised the risk of suffering a silent stroke include one that you really don’t want to do much about, namely growing older (hey! Sure as heck beats the alternative). But the other major risk factors for silent stroke also included, as you might expect, smoking, high blood pressure, and having heart disease and/or diabetes, and if you think just one second about that second list of risk factors, you quickly realize that those are all highly preventable risk factors. Bottom line: if you really want to reduce your risk of stroke (and hey, who wouldn’t), live as healthy a lifestyle as you can manage while you’re still a young (or even a not-so-young-any-longer dude or dudette).
Dr. Art Hister
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