(Press-News.org) Making small lifestyle changes could reduce your risk of having a stroke, according to a new study in the American Heart Association journal Stroke.
Researchers assessed stroke risk using the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 health factors: be active, control cholesterol, eat a healthy diet, manage blood pressure, maintain a healthy weight, control blood sugar and don't smoke.
"We used the assessment tool to look at stroke risk and found that small differences in health status were associated with large reductions in stroke risk," said Mary Cushman, M.D., M.Sc., senior author and professor of medicine at the University of Vermont in Burlington.
Researchers divided the Life's Simple 7 scores into three categories: zero to four points for inadequate, five to nine points for average, and 10 to 14 points for optimum cardiovascular health.
Researchers found:
Every one-point increase toward a better score was associated with an 8 percent lower stroke risk.
Compared to those with inadequate scores, people with optimum scores had a 48 percent lower stroke risk and those with average scores had a 27 percent lower stroke risk.
A better score was associated with a similar reduced stroke risk in blacks and whites.
While black participants had worse Life's Simple 7 scores than whites, the association of the Life's Simple 7 score with stroke risk was similar in black and white participants. "This highlights the critical importance of improving these health factors since blacks have nearly twice the stroke mortality rates as whites," Cushman said.
Cushman and colleagues reviewed information on 22,914 black and white Americans age 45 and older who are participating in a nationwide population-based study called the Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS).
Researchers collected data in 2003-07 by telephone, self-administered questionnaires and at-home exams. Participants were followed for 5 years for stroke. Many of the study participants live in the Southeast region of the United States where death rates from stroke are the highest.
During the study, 432 strokes occurred. All seven health factors in Life's Simple 7 played an important role in predicting the risk for stroke, but having ideal blood pressure was the most important indicator of stroke risk, researchers said.
"Compared to those with poor blood pressure status, those who were ideal had a 60 percent lower risk of future stroke," Cushman said.
Researchers also found that those who didn't smoke or quit smoking more than one year prior to the beginning of the study had a 40 percent lower stroke risk.
Each year, about 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke — the No. 4 killer and a leading cause of long-term disability. Every four minutes, an American dies from stroke. People can check their health status at http://www.mylifecheck.org.
INFORMATION:
Co-authors are Ambar Kulshreshtha, M.D., M.P.H. (first author); Viola Vaccarino, M.D., Ph.D.; Suzanne Judd, Ph.D.; Virginia J. Howard, Ph.D.; William McClellan, M.D., M.P.H.; Paul Muntner, Ph.D.; Yuling Hong, M.D., Ph.D.; Monika M. Safford, M.D. and Abhinav Goyal, M.D., M.H.S. Author disclosures are on the manuscript.
REGARDS is funded by a cooperative agreement from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Service.
For the latest heart and stroke news, follow @HeartNews on Twitter.
For stroke science, follow Stroke at @StrokeAHA_ASA.
Statements and conclusions of study authors published in American Heart Association scientific journals are solely those of the study authors and do not necessarily reflect the association's policy or position. The association makes no representation or guarantee as to their accuracy or reliability. The association receives funding primarily from individuals; foundations and corporations (including pharmaceutical, device manufacturers and other companies) also make donations and fund specific association programs and events. The association has strict policies to prevent these relationships from influencing the science content. Revenues from pharmaceutical and device corporations are available at http://www.heart.org/corporatefunding.
Small lifestyle changes may have big impact on reducing stroke risk
2013-06-07
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
How similar are the gestures of apes and human infants? More than you might suspect
2013-06-07
Psychologists who analyzed video footage of a female chimpanzee, a female bonobo and a female human infant in a study to compare different types of gestures at comparable stages of communicative development found remarkable similarities among the three species.
This is the first time such data have been used to compare the development of gestures across species. The chimpanzee and bonobo, formerly called the "pygmy chimpanzee," are the two species most closely related to humans in the evolutionary tree.
"The similarity in the form and function of the gestures in ...
ALMA discovers comet factory
2013-06-07
Astronomers now know that planets around other stars are plentiful. But they do not fully understand how they form and there are many aspects of the formation of comets, planets and other rocky bodies that remain a mystery. However, new observations exploiting the power of ALMA are now answering one of the biggest questions: how do tiny grains of dust in the disc around a young star grow bigger and bigger — to eventually become rubble, and even boulders well beyond a metre in size?
Computer models suggest that dust grains grow when they collide and stick together. However, ...
Frontiers news briefs: June 6
2013-06-07
Frontiers in Neuroscience
Immune regulation of ovarian development: programming by neonatal immune challenge
Bacterial infections during early life, such as Chlamydia which is present in 15% of newly born babies, may reduce reproductive success in adult women. For example, exposure to bacteria can lead to a change in the onset of puberty, as well as in ovarian morphology and sexual behavior. Luba Sominsky and colleagues from the University of Newcastle, Australia, here show that when infant rats are injected with lipopolysaccharide molecules that are normally found ...
The swing of architect genes
2013-06-07
A few days. This is the short period of time during which our body's construction plan is put in place, during its embryonic life. The appea- rance of limbs and vertebrae is orchestrated by a family of 'architect' genes called Hox, each providing precise instructions at a given time. Denis Duboule, a geneticist at the Faculty of Science of the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), demonstrated that these genes were aligned within our chromosomes according to the order of structures that will emerge: first the components ...
Conflict-of-interest restrictions needed to ensure strong FDA review
2013-06-07
WASHINGTON, DC—A 2012 law that loosened conflict-of-interest restrictions for FDA advisory panels could weaken the agency's review system and could allow more drugs with safety problems to gain market approval, says a new analysis published June 7 in Science by researchers at the George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services (SPHHS).
The 2012 legislation removed measures put in place by an earlier law passed in 2007, according to the report by Susan F. Wood, PhD, an associate professor of health policy at SPHHS and Jillian K. Mador, a medical ...
Minor changes in cardiovascular health reduce chances of stroke
2013-06-07
A report, published in Stroke, showed that small improvements in cardiovascular risk factors reduce the chances a person will suffer a stroke. The report is part of an ongoing national study called Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) which is funded by NIH's National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability in the United States. Strokes are caused by abnormal changes in blood flow in the brain or the bursting of brain blood vessels. Previous studies suggest that strokes can be prevented ...
'Dust trap' around distant star may solve planet formation mystery
2013-06-07
Based on a treasure trove of recent discoveries, astronomers now know that planets are remarkably plentiful in our galaxy and may be common throughout the Universe. Though planets appear to form readily, the actual process of planet formation remains a mystery and astronomers are searching for the missing pieces to this cosmic puzzle.
An international team of researchers using the new Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) telescope has discovered an intriguing clue that could help explain how rocky planets are able to evolve out of a swirling disk of dust ...
How young genes gain a toehold on becoming indispensable
2013-06-07
SEATTLE – Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center scientists have, for the first time, mapped a young gene's short, dramatic evolutionary journey to becoming essential, or indispensable. In a study published online June 6 in Science, the researchers detail one gene's rapid switch to a new and essential function in the fruit fly, challenging the long-held belief that only ancient genes are important.
"We really haven't paid much attention to what is new, because there's so much emphasis on what is old," said Harmit Singh Malik, Ph.D., a member of the Hutchinson Center's ...
Rapid change in China brings significant improvements in health
2013-06-07
SEATTLE—China made substantial gains in health over the past two decades, including increases in life expectancy, reductions in child mortality, and declines in infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and lower respiratory infections. But with that success accompanies the growth of non-communicable diseases and risk factors such as tobacco use and high blood pressure, which could overwhelm the health system.
These are some of the findings published June 8 in The Lancet in an analysis by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Peking Union Medical College ...
Gannets don't eat off each other's plates
2013-06-07
Colonies of gannets maintain vast exclusive fishing ranges despite doing nothing to defend their territory from rival colonies, scientists have discovered.
A team of researchers led by the University of Leeds and the University of Exeter observed that northern gannets, which can fly hundreds of kilometres on a single fishing trip, avoided visiting the fishing grounds of gannets from neighbouring colonies.
The findings, published in the journal Science, could transform our understanding of animals' foraging patterns because individual gannets do nothing to enforce this ...