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Most of us are infinitely more familiar with the symptoms of a Big Mac attack than a brain attack, also known as a stroke. In fact, one study found that 27 percent of the general public didn’t know a single warning sign of stroke, whereas the craving for beef, though hard to describe, often ends with a visit to your favorite grease pit.
If you want to be a card-carrying death defter, it’s imperative that you bone up your knowledge about stroke – the nation’s third leading killer. The brain cells and life you save could be your own. “The majority of stroke sufferers do not get to the hospital within the three-hour time frame we need to help them,” says Fletcher McDowell, M.D., professor of neurology at Cornell University Medical College in New York City and president of the Burke Medical Research Group in White Plains, New York. “If you get treatment within that time period, medication may reverse the stroke process or limit its extent.”
Part of the problem is that some consider stroke an old person’s disease. Guess again. While most stroke victims are over age 65, nearly 30 percent are under 65. “It can happen at any age,” says LaRoy Penix, M.D., assistant professor of neurology at the University Of Kentucky College Of Medicine in Lexington, and faculty associate at the Sanders-Brown stroke program, also at the university. “We have a child here now who had a stroke at the age of 12.”
The brain of a stroke victim tells the story. In the most common scenario, an ischemic stroke, an artery leading to the brain has been blocked by a blood clot. Whether blood flow is blocked by a clot or fatty plaque-the same mixture of cholesterol and other debris that can cause heart attacks-the result is the same. Starved of blood, oxygen, and other vital nutrients for even a few minutes, brain cells begin to die, Dr. McDowell says.
When this occurs you’re likely to get some signs that something is seriously wrong: sudden loss of vision in one eye; weakness, numbness, or tingling on one side of the body; difficulty speaking or understanding what people are saying; trouble walking; severe dizziness; or unsteadiness. It’s a list you’ll want to remember: One study found that 52 percent of stroke patients were unaware they were experiencing a stroke.
“These may be warning signs that the circulation in the brain is not working right and you are at risk for stroke and should seek medical attention,” says Dr. Ralph Sacco of the National Stroke Association.
The sooner you seek it, the better. Statistics show that most stroke victims don’t report to an emergency room until more than 24 hours after their first symptoms-many hours too late for the best possible treatment. Make it in time and chances are good that the doctors will give you what’s called a clot-buster to try to dissolve the blockage and get the blood flowing again, Dr. Sacco says.
If blood flow isn’t restored, entire regions of your brain can die. And since these different regions are responsible for various bodily functions- memory, vision, and so on-the shutdown results in familiar forms of disability. Someone who suffers a small stroke, for example, might temporarily lose the use of the muscles in one side of his face. More widespread damage to a key area of the brain can have even more devastating results. “If the area controlling motor function is damaged, for example, that can cause paralysis. Or if that area controls vision, then there’s vision loss,” Dr. Sacco says.
What, you may ask, are the main culprits in this debilitating, and often deadly, scenario? In addition to plaque buildup or clots, often it’s years of high blood pressure-literally the pressure caused by blood on arterial walls-that cause “hardening of the arteries to the brain, small-vessel clogging, or particles blocking arteries,” Dr. Sacco says. In fact, high blood pressure is the single most important controllable stroke risk factor. And, of course, anything that helps keep your arteries and blood vessels clear-such as eating less saturated fat and more fiber, losing weight, and lowering your cholesterol-will go a long way in helping you avoid not only stroke but heart disease as well. In fact, reducing your risk for heart disease will also reduce your likelihood of a stroke.
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