Stroke Archive

Strokes hit women hard. Self-care is key to preventing a stroke and minimizing the damage if you have one.

This year an estimated 425,000 women will have a stroke, and 55,000 will die from one. Women are more likely than men to have strokes, and they are also more likely to be disabled or to die from them.

Daily aspirin use has increased among U.S. adults, according to a survey published May 2015 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. The survey asked more than 2,500 people ages 45 to 75 about their current aspirin use. The overall use was 52%, up from 41% in a similar survey in 2004. The most common reasons for taking daily aspirin were prevention of heart attack and stroke. Eighteen percent of aspirin users cited cancer prevention as their reason for taking aspirin. And while most users said they'd talked to their doctor before starting aspirin therapy, 25% of the respondents had not. That finding is troubling, since aspirin is a blood thinner. "Aspirin can increase the risk of bleeding in the brain or elsewhere in the body. This risk might be justified if there is a good reason for aspirin use, but might be entirely unjustifiable if not. That is why I always recommend discussing any medication or supplement use with one's primary care provider," says Dr. Natalia Rost, associate professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. 

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Find out if your sleeping habits put you at risk—and what to do about it.

People with high blood pressure could benefit from a B vitamin known as folate if they are not getting enough from their diets, according to a study in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The study included more than 20,000 adults in China with high blood pressure who had never had a stroke or heart attack. Participants who took folate supplements along with a blood pressure medication had fewer strokes over the four-and-one-half-year trial than those who only took the medication.

The dangers of hypertension are well documented, but low blood pressure levels can cause problems, too.

Green vegetables and citrus fruits are good natural sources of folate.

If you're among the one in three American adults with high blood pressure, be sure you're getting enough of the B vitamin known as folate. Doing so may lower your odds of having a stroke, a new study suggests.

Atrial fibrillation is a heart rhythm disorder that affects millions of people. It can lead to potentially disabling or deadly strokes. Researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine adding motion-tracking software to standard MRI heart scans of 149 men and women with atrial fibrillation. The scans revealed specific changes in the muscles of the left atrium that increased stroke risk in some of the volunteers. These changes were not associated with age or other risk factors for stroke. This could help many people with this condition to avoid taking warfarin or other clot-preventing medications for life. But it is much too early to include MRI as part of the standard evaluation of people with atrial fibrillation — not to mention that such scans would significantly increase the cost of these evaluations. For now, doctors will continue to use standard tools to help determine stroke risk.

Identifying and treating a stroke as quickly as possible can save brain cells, function, and lives. Everyone should know the warning signs of a stroke and when to get help fast.

The warning signs of a stroke can begin anywhere from a few minutes to days before a stroke actually occurs. The National Stroke Association has devised the FAST checklist to help determine whether a person is having a stroke.

Preventing stroke is the top priority if your heart is beating irregularly. A variety of options can control symptoms.

A flutter in the chest and a racing heartbeat could be just a passing cardiac blip, perhaps triggered by emotional stress or too much caffeine. But sometimes it's a sign of atrial fibrillation—the irregular quivering of the heart's upper chambers, or atria.

Many men consider taking a daily low-dose aspirin to reduce the chance of having a heart attack or stroke. You should do so only if the chance of being helped outweighs the chance of triggering unwanted bleeding, since aspirin interferes with normal clotting. But about one in 10 men who take protective aspirin may not really qualify, according to a national study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Experts recommend that aspirin might be considered in someone whose chance of experiencing a cardiovascular problem is at least 6% in the next 10 years. At that tipping point, the chance of being helped is great enough to justify the risk of unwanted bleeding.