Strokes Are Preventable Reports MainStream Medicine

Yesterday, there was an article in USA Today that gathered information from several different sources to report that strokes are preventable, for the most part - and by the way, people living in 8 states have a 12% higher chance of getting a stroke than the rest of the country.

Those Southern states are Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee. 

Not much to report on why the populace of these select states are at higher risk.  You'd think they'd be checking into diet, shared vegetation, and the like - but nothing was said (er, written) about that, and this struck me as interesting. Or suspect.  Why not Kentucky or Florida here?  Where's Texas, if you've got Arkansas and Louisiana? 

The article goes on to give various tips to avoid a stroke.  You've heard them.  Don't smoke.  Don't drink.  Don't eat salt.  Walk regularly.  Don't get fat and lose it if you are. 

There's lots more information regarding strokes over at the National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Stroke Association. 

 Diet and Exercise Keys to Preventing Stroke, Heart Disease, and all Degenerative Diseases

However, just a couple of months ago ABC News reported that following the Mediterranean Diet could prevent strokes - and dementia.  This, from researchers at Columbia University - where they admit there's just not that much mainstream research into this sort of thing. 

Meanwhile, on the alternative medicine front, Dr. Mercola has been telling folk for a long while that the key to preventing strokes (and all degenerative disease, including dementia) is to get physically fit and stay that way -- and to eat the right chemicals for your body.   

Interestingly, Dr. Mercola also points to studies that show one of the biggest stroke factors is STRESS.  The higher the stress level, the more at risk you are for a "brain attack." 

Food is just a bunch of chemicals that you ingest in order to keep your body going, after all.  And everything that you imbibe as well as put on your skin (think make-up and deodorant) impacts your health. 

So, to prevent stroke:

Follow a good diet.
Get fit.
Walk every day.
Keep your stress level down.

In other words, follow the lifestyle that we talk about here!!!!  Have a great week, Dear Reader!

Image:  Edward Arthur Walton's A Morning Walk (1886), Wikimedia Commons public domain