Stroke resources - prevention
Risk factors
Strokes are preventable and treatable. Controlling these risk factors can help you to reduce your risk of stroke:
- Keep your blood pressure and cholesterol low
- Exercise and enjoy a healthy balanced diet
- Do not smoke
- Limit alcohol consumption
- If you have diabetes, manage it actively
Information from the Better Health Channel below helps you with these factors.
Reduce high blood pressure
High blood pressure (hypertension) is the most significant risk factor for stroke. Hypertension means that the blood is exerting more pressure than is normal or healthy. Over time, this weakens and damages blood vessel walls, which can lead to cerebral haemorrhage.
Hypertension may also cause thickening of the artery walls, resulting in narrowing and eventual blockage of the vessel (ischaemic stroke). In atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), the pressure of your pumping blood could ‘hose off’ debris from damaged artery walls. The circulating debris (embolism) can cause a stroke by lodging in and blocking a blood vessel of the brain.
Strategies to reduce high blood pressure include:
- Check your blood pressure regularly and know your numbers.
- Maintain a healthy weight for your height.
- Choose a low fat, high fibre diet.
- Reduce or eliminate salt from your diet.
- Limit your alcohol intake to two or less standard drinks per day.
- Stop smoking.
- Take antihypertensive medications to help control high blood pressure.
Exercise regularly
If you don’t exercise regularly, this increases the likelihood of obesity, high blood pressure and high blood cholesterol levels. These are all important risk factors for stroke.
Suggestions include:
- See your doctor for a check-up if you haven’t exercised for a while.
- Choose a range of activities you enjoy.
- Start your new exercise program slowly and only increase the intensity and duration as you become fitter.
- Exercise with a friend or join a team sport to add a fun social element to the activity.
- Remember to warm up and cool down.
- Contact your doctor, a physiotherapist or gymnasium instructor for advice and information regarding appropriate exercise.
- Try to get moderate exercise for at least 30 minutes on (at least) five days of the week.
Eat a healthy diet
Various studies show that diet is an important risk factor in the development of stroke. Suggestions include:
Limit or moderate salt intake. Choose fresh rather than processed foods. Increase your intake of vegetables, fruit and whole grains. Cut out or reduce sugary and fatty foods like cakes, lollies and junk food. See a dietitian who can help you plan a well-balanced low fat, high fibre diet.
Quit smoking
Smoking can double or even quadruple your risk of stroke. Some of the chemical ingredients in cigarette smoke (such as nicotine and carbon monoxide) accelerate the process of atherosclerosis. Clots are more likely to form because smoking thickens the blood and makes clotting factors, such as platelets, much more ‘sticky’. Cigarette smoke forces arteries to constrict – a narrowed diameter makes it harder for the thickened blood to move through the vessels.
Strategies to quit smoking include:
Call the Quitline on 137 848 for further advice and support. See your doctor for information and advice.
Avoid heavy drinking
People who drink heavily are three times more likely to have a stroke, regardless of their age. It is important to limit your alcohol intake.
Suggestions include:
- Limit your consumption to no more than two standard drinks per day.
- Have at least two alcohol-free days every week.
- See your doctor for information and referral if you are finding it difficult to limit your alcohol intake.
Manage your diabetes
Diabetes is a chronic condition in which the body is unable to utilise blood sugar. A person with diabetes is around twice as likely to have a stroke as someone of the same gender and age who doesn’t have diabetes. It is very important that diabetes be kept under control.
Strategies to reduce the effects of diabetes include:
- See your doctor regularly for check-ups.
- Monitor your blood sugar levels regularly.
- Maintain a healthy weight for your height.
- Exercise regularly.
- Choose a low fat, high fibre diet.
- If you are on medication, make sure you are taking it correctly.