Women over 50 can reduce their risk of stroke by including healthy habits, research suggests
Women over 50 can lower their stroke risk by including healthy habits, such as exercising and dumping junk food, research suggests
- The main habits to adopt are daily exercise, consuming less junk food and alcohol
- Diets should include eating more fish, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables
- The findings show that it is never too late to protect against serious illnesses
Women who adopt healthy habits in middle age reduce the risk of stroke by more than a third, researchers say.
The main habits they should adopt are daily exercise, consume less junk food and alcohol, do not smoke, and lose a few pounds if they are overweight.
The findings confirm that it is never too late to protect against serious illnesses.
Women who adopt healthy habits in middle age reduce their risk of stroke by more than a third, researchers say (stock image)
“We found that changing a healthy lifestyle, even in your 50s, still has the potential to prevent strokes,” said heart specialist Professor Goodarz Danaei, the study’s author.
“Middle-aged women who made lifestyle changes reduced their long-term risk of total stroke by nearly a quarter and ischemic stroke, the most common type, by more than a third.”
Ischemic strokes account for 80 percent of cases. They occur when a clot blocks blood flow to the brain.
The more rare hemorrhagic stroke occurs when a blood vessel in the brain bursts.
Strokes are the fourth most common cause of death in the UK, claiming 38,000 lives each year. In general, women are more susceptible than men.
They also die more often and have poorer health and physical function after a stroke.
The average age for a first stroke in women is 75, and researchers in the US wanted to see if making simple lifestyle changes in middle age could help reduce their risk.
They analyzed data on nearly 60,000 women from the Nurses’ Health Study in North America who enrolled in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and were tracked for decades.
Eating more fish, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables and using less red and processed meat and alcohol can help you stay healthy (stock image)
The impact of quitting smoking, exercising for 30 minutes or more daily, and gradual weight loss for people with a body mass index of at least 25 was assessed.
BMI is a measure used to determine a healthy weight for an individual height. The researchers, whose study was published in the medical journal Stroke, also looked at the effect of expert-recommended dietary changes.
This included eating more fish, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables and cutting red and processed meats and alcohol.
The participants were followed for an average of 26 years, making it one of the largest and longest studies of its kind.
Exercising daily, losing weight and not smoking reduced the risk of ischemic stroke by 36 percent and the overall risk of stroke by 25 percent.
Those who experienced sustained dietary improvements were 23 percent less likely to have a stroke.
Professor Danaei, from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, pointed out that the study was based on an observational study of mostly middle-aged white women.
But he added, “There are other studies to support the proportional changes in stroke risk due to lifestyle, and dietary adjustments may be generalizable for men.”
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