risk factors of stroke

⁣A stressful day won't necessarily affect your stroke risk, but chronic stress may increase probability. Further, stroke risk is significantly influenced by anxiety, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and diabetes.⁣

There are some lifestyle habits and choices we can make to prevent strokes, but some factors, such as race, gender, and family history, cannot be controlled.⁣

Regardless, don't let the cards you're dealt determine your health and well-being. Managing your weight, blood sugar, quitting smoking, limiting alcohol, and managing stress all contribute to lowering your risk of stroke––and these are variables within your control.

Consider your current lifestyle and health status, and note that presenting with the following risk factors for stroke may warrant consulting a physician and tweaking your habits to prevent further injury:

• High blood pressure: Having high blood pressure can cause the arteries supplying blood and oxygen to the brain to burst or become blocked, resulting in a stroke. A stroke causes brain cells to die due to a lack of oxygen.

  As a result of a stroke, you may experience serious difficulties speaking, moving, and performing other basic tasks.⁣

• Heart disease: Heart disease increases risk of stroke in sufferers, with both conditions being a part of a group of cardiovascular diseases that impair your heart and blood vessels.

  Death, disability, and poor quality of life are often associated with heart disease and stroke. However, by reducing risk factors like high blood pressure and high cholesterol, both diseases can often be prevented.⁣

• Diabetes: A person with diabetes has difficulty processing food properly. The body's inability to make insulin or use insulin correctly causes glucose (sugar) to build up in the blood. A high glucose level can damage the body's blood vessels over time, increasing stroke risk.⁣

• Smoking: Using nicotine products and smoking increases blood pressure and lowers oxygen levels in the blood, which doubles your stroke risk. Hypertension is a major cause of stroke. There are over 4,000 toxic chemicals found in tobacco smoke that are deposited in the lungs or absorbed into the bloodstream, damaging the blood vessels.

• Birth control pills (oral contraceptives): A high stroke risk is associated with combined oral contraceptives in patients who smoke, have high blood pressure, and suffer from migraine with aura.

  Pregnancy increases the risk of ischemic stroke. However, combined OCPs may reduce that risk.⁣

• TIAs (transient ischemic attacks): The most common type of stroke, an ischemic stroke, has the same origin as a transient ischemic attack. Ischemic strokes occur when a blood clot blocks blood flow to part of the brain.

  The blockage in a TIA is brief, unlike a stroke, and there is no permanent damage but could be indicative of poor vascular function and an environment more suitable for future instances of stroke.⁣

• High red blood cell count: Clots are more likely to form when red blood cell counts are high. Because sickle cells stick to blood vessel walls, they can block arteries causing strokes.

• High blood cholesterol and lipids: You can develop fatty deposits in your blood vessels if you have high cholesterol. Over time, these deposits grow, preventing enough blood from passing through your arteries.

  Heart attacks and strokes are sometimes caused by sudden breaks in those deposits, forming clots.⁣

• Lack of exercise: It is possible to reduce the risk of an initial or secondary stroke by moving more frequently––preventing artery clogging, maintaining a healthy heart, and lowering blood pressure.

  In a study, high levels of inactivity during leisure time were associated with an increased stroke risk of 20% to 25 percent, compared with those who performed high levels of physical activity. It was 15% higher when compared with those who performed moderate physical activity during their leisure time.⁣

• Obesity: Overweight, obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, accelerated atherosclerosis, atrial fibrillation, and obstructive sleep apnea all contribute to stroke risk.

  Eventually, atherosclerosis or thromboembolism may lead to arterial occlusion or rupture.

• Excessive alcohol use: Strokes are associated with heavy alcohol consumption.

  The greater the amount of alcohol consumed, the greater the risk of stroke. There is no difference between ischemic strokes and hemorrhagic strokes in this regard.⁣

• Illegal drugs: Drug abuse increases the risk of ischemic stroke and intracerebral hemorrhage. Amphetamines, cocaine, and phencyclidine stimulate the sympathetic nervous system, resulting in elevated blood pressure and vasospasm––all increasing instances of vascular emergency.⁣

• Abnormal heart rhythm: Heart arrhythmias can cause complications such as stroke, sudden death, and heart failure.

  Plus, patients with heart arrhythmias are at an increased risk of blood clots. And a clot that breaks loose in the heart may travel to the brain and cause a stroke.⁣

• Cardiac structural abnormalities: Infective endocarditis, nonbacterial thrombotic endocarditis, and atrial myxoma are the main cardiac causes of cerebral embolism.

  AFib is the form of arrhythmia most closely associated with stroke. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that AFib is the cause of approximately one out of every seven strokes and that strokes caused by AFib tend to be among the most damaging.