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Even in middle age, making healthy lifestyle changes can reduce a woman's risk of stroke
Women who do daily exercise in middle age may have a lower risk of stroke later in life.
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Making sustained healthy dietary changes were estimated to reduce the risk of total stroke by 23 percent. Increasing fish and nut intake and reducing unprocessed red meat intake also reduced stroke risk, albeit by a smaller amount. (Shutterstock/udra11)
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ew research has found that even in middle age, it is not too late for women to make healthy lifestyle changes which could significantly reduce their risk of stroke.
Carried out by researchers at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital, USA, along with the University of São Paulo Medical School, Brazil, the new study looked at data gathered from the Nurses' Health Study, an ongoing American study which is one of the largest to investigate risk factors for major chronic diseases in women.
The researchers had access to health information on 59,727 women enrolled in the research, which included data on their smoking status, how much they exercised, their diet and their body mass index (BMI).
The women had an average age of 52 when they signed up for the study, and were then followed for an average of 26 years.
The findings, published in Stroke, a journal of the American Stroke Association, showed that during the follow-up, 4.7 percent of women who made no lifestyle changes had a stroke of any type, with 2.4 percent experiencing ischemic stroke and 0.7 percent having a hemorrhagic stroke.
Read also: Sleep more than nine hours and take naps? You could be increasing your risk of stroke
However, the researchers estimated that if women did make three non-dietary lifestyle interventions -- stopping smoking, doing 30 minutes of exercise a day and losing weight if they were overweight -- they could reduce their risk of total stroke by 25 percent and ischemic stroke by 36 percent.
Making sustained healthy dietary changes were estimated to reduce the risk of total stroke by 23 percent. Increasing fish and nut intake and reducing unprocessed red meat intake also reduced stroke risk, albeit by a smaller amount.
"We found that changing to a healthy lifestyle, even in your 50s, still has the potential to prevent strokes," said Goodarz Danaei, Sc.D., lead study author. "Women who made lifestyle modifications in middle age reduced their long-term risk of total stroke by nearly a quarter and ischemic stroke, the most common type of stroke, by more than one-third."
Although the researchers note this was an observational study and so cannot establish cause and effect, Danaei said "there are other studies to support that the proportional changes in stroke risk from lifestyle and dietary modifications may be generalizable to men. We also estimate that exercising 30 minutes or more daily may reduce the risk of stroke by 20 percent."
