Having a Heart Healthy Lifestyle May Lower Your Risk For Stroke

Author: Drucilla Dyess

Maintaining a heart-healthy lifestyle including daily exercise, eating a heart-healthy diet and maintaining a healthy weight, drinking alcohol only in moderation and not smoking, are steps you can take to be healthier and to prolong your life. But, just as importantly, this lifestyle also significantly reduce your risk of suffering a stroke, according to a new study recently published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association.

During the study, it was found that people who have developed these healthy lifestyle habits enjoy about an 80 percent lower risk of ischemic stroke when compared to people who acquired none of these healthy habits. This "low-risk" lifestyle is also recommended to decrease the risk of many chronic diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

Stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain functions due to a disturbance in the blood vessels supplying blood to the brain. In the United States, stroke is the third leading cause of death, and a major cause of permanent disability, according to the study.

Ischemic stroke occurs when an artery to the brain is blocked. The brain depends on its arteries to bring fresh blood from the heart and lungs. The blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain, and takes away carbon dioxide and cellular waste. If an artery is blocked, the brain cells cannot make enough energy and will eventually stop working. If the artery remains blocked for more than a few minutes, the brain cells may die.

The research was led by Dr. Stephanie E. Chiuve of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and was funded by The National Institutes of Health. Participants in the study included 43,685 men with an average age of 54 and 71,243 women with an average age 50. These men and women were also participants in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (The Nurses' Health Study).

None of the participants had a major chronic diseases and all provided information about their health and lifestyles every two years from 1986 through 2002 for health professionals and from 1984 through 2002 for nurses. During the period of analysis 994 men and 1,559 women became the victims of stroke.

The study focused on exercising 30 minutes or more each day, maintaining a normal body weight with a body mass index below 25, taking a multivitamin for at least five years, eating a healthy diet including fruits and vegetables, chicken and fish, nuts, legumes, cereal fiber and avoiding high amounts of trans and saturated fats. In addition, participants were encouraged to drink alcohol in moderation, which was defined as one-half to one drink a day for women and one-half to two drinks a day for men, and to avoid smoking.

The researchers found that women who had all the healthy lifestyle factors had a 79 percent lower risk for any type of stroke with an 81 percent less risk of ischemic stroke when compared with women who had none of the lifestyle factors. Men with all five healthy lifestyle factors were found to have a 69 percent lower risk of any type of stroke and an 80 percent lower risk of ischemic stroke when compared to men with none of these lifestyle factors.
Individual factors can also have an impact on your stroke risk. As an example, the study found that quitting smoking reduced the risk of stroke by almost 50 percent, while having a only a glass of alcohol each day can decrease the risk by 10 percent.

In a written statement issued by the American Heart Association, Chiuve stated, "More than half of ischemic strokes, 52 percent in men and 54 percent in women, may have been prevented through adherence to a healthy lifestyle." Chiuve went on to explain, "For total stroke, 47 percent of cases in the women and 35 percent of cases in the men may have been prevented."