Here’s how to reduce your risk of stoke
March 03 2014
Your diet accounts for about 80% of the benefits you reap from a healthy lifestyle. But in order to truly optimize your health, your healthy lifestyle must include exercise.
Exercise helps in preventing obesity and diabetes, reducing stress, and lowering your blood pressure. By maintaining a fitness regimen, you can also go a long way toward warding off the risk of stroke.
Thankfully, up to 80 percent of strokes are preventable. Research shows that lifestyle factors such as diet, exercise, weight, blood sugar levels, blood pressure, and smoking can have a direct bearing on your individual risk.
The study found that moderate exercise (such as taking a brisk walk) reduced women’s stroke risk by 20 percent. It also helped to mildly offset the increased stroke risk in older women using postmenopausal hormone therapy.
As a general rule, eating unprocessed, natural foods will help to reduce your risk of stroke. As for specific items to avoid, the following are at the top of the list:
• Trans fats are known to promote inflammation, which is a hallmark of most chronic and/or serious diseases, including strokes and heart disease. Women in particular would be well served to avoid trans fats as stroke rates are on the rise in middle-aged women, and poor dietary choices are likely a significant culprit. In one 2010 study, post-menopausal women who consumed the most daily dietary trans fat had a 30 percent higher incidence of ischemic strokes.
• Certain preservatives, such as sodium nitrate and nitrite found in smoked and processed meats have also been shown to damage your blood vessels, which could increase your risk of stroke.
• Artificial sweeteners may also increase your risk. Previous research has shown that drinking just one diet soda a day may increase your risk of stroke by 48 percent.
