According to studies, some risk factors may be secretly affecting you. The following are common undiagnosed risk factors found in stroke patients.
One of the leading causes of brain damage and death is stroke, which affects more than 795,000 Americans. A majority of these strokes are ischemic, which means a blood clot or other substance is blocking oxygen and blood from reaching part of the brain.
Researchers from the Centre Vaudois in Lausanne, Switzerland, presented their findings at the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) Congress 2022 in Vienna, Austria. According to their results, 67.7% of stroke patients had at least one major risk factor but were never diagnosed.
Common Factors
Researchers note that dyslipidemia was the leading risk factor, affecting 61.4% of the patients. The condition involves high cholesterol and triglycerides. Moreover, high blood pressure (hypertension) was the second most common risk factor, affecting 23.7% of patients.
Dr. André Rêgo, the lead author of the study, mentions eight other major factors as part of the study: “So what we did was create two groups, the first with patients that didn’t know they had those first five risk factors (potentially unknown) and compared to the second group with the remaining patients that would be aware of having at least one of these five. Both groups could have any number of the other remaining five major risk factors,” Rêgo explains.
Unknown Factors
Rego and his team believe that financial reasons, symptoms presented, and overlooking preventive care may impact the detection of these factors. In fact, people with a lower body mass index can be more unaware of their other risk factors.
“Several men in our [focus] groups saw little value in going for preventive healthcare visits because they erroneously thought that as long as they felt fine there was little point to going,” says Derek Griffith, Ph.D., professor of health systems administration and oncology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C. and founder and co-director of the Racial Justice Institute. He did not take part in the study.
The Outlook
According to Jason Tarpley, MD, Ph.D., stroke neurologist and director of the Stroke and Neurovascular Center for Pacific Neuroscience Institute at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, the top risk factors for stroke are dyslipidemia, hypertension, and atrial fibrillation.
Fortunately, Tarpley explains that these factors are all preventable: “I mean that there’s something you can do. You don’t have to just wait and see. You can actually get your cholesterol [and] blood pressure checked. If you have atrial fibrillation, see your doctor and get put on a blood thinner.”
Some things you can do to improve your risk factors are to exercise regularly, eat healthily, and take L-arginine Plus. As a heart supplement, it promotes circulation, blood pressure, cholesterol, and more. Give your brain health the support it deserves and take L-arginine Plus.