Thursday, October 18, 2012

Younger Stroke Victims

Although we are winning the battle against strokes, one age group is having more strokes than ever before.

It looks like more people are having strokes at a younger age and that means more years dealing with its after effects.

Strokes, like heart attacks, are usually something we worry about as we get older. But a new study, just published by the American Academy of Neurology, has found that one-in-five stroke victims are now under the age of 55. And in the words of the "Stroke Association," these new numbers are alarming.

This study looked at more 1 million people here in the U.S. Researchers found that 19% of them, or nearly one-in-five, had a stroke in 2005. That's a large increase from the slightly more than one-in-10 having them back in 1993.

Although they aren't sure exactly why this is happening, stroke experts think it could have to do with the similar increase we are seeing in obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol in this same age group. And having a stroke this young can cause more lifetime disability.

More research is going into trying to figure out what is exactly behind these numbers, but keeping healthy, by eating right, exercising and controlling your blood pressure and cholesterol can be your best defense against having a stroke yourself.

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Tomatoes For Stroke

Do you want to cut down on your chances of having a stroke? Then maybe the key is to bite into a tomato.

And the beauty of it is that it doesn't have to be a whole tomato. It could even be tomato sauce, or even better, a slice of pizza, that can help cut your risk of having a stroke. Researchers have found that the antioxidant in tomatoes, lycopene, reduced the chances of men having a stroke. And although the study didn't look at women, the same is probably true for them as well.

This study, published in the journal Neurology, found that men with the highest levels of lycopene also had the lowest levels of strokes. Tomatoes are rich in lycopenes. It is also in tomato products like marinara sauce, pizza sauce and even ketchup. But if tomatoes aren't your thing, then you can also find high levels of lycopenes in other fruits like watermelon, papaya, grapefruit and mangos.

This study first started off to see if vitamins A or E cut stroke risk. Surprisingly they didn't, but the researchers instead found out about how beneficial lycopenes were in keeping this devastating problem at bay.

So the next time you sit down to eat, grab that tomato. It could be doing a lot more for your health than you think.

Early Migraine Treatment

If you suffer from migraines, do they seem hard to control? It could all be in the timing.

It does seem to all come down to the timing, at least when you decide to finally treat a migraine and not just wait to see if it will get better.

Millions of Americans suffer from migraines. These headaches can range from minor inconveniences to ones that can be debilitating and long lasting. The problem tends to happen when a migraine patient is deciding whether the headache is big enough to treat "yet." If it gets better on its own great, but if it gets worse it's probably going to be even harder to treat later on.

That's also the finding of a new study presented by the American Academy of Neurology. Researchers found that the best hope of making sure the migraine didn't get worse was to treat it within the first 20 minutes of symptoms. They also found that after 4 hours, the symptoms tend to spiral out of control to the point where the migraine starts affecting the entire body and gets even harder to treat.

According to them, a lot of migraine sufferers wait because they have been told to just ride it out for a while and not take the medicines unless absolutely necessary. But they are recommending making sure that decision is made sooner than later once symptoms start.