Fewer Strokes When Elderly Patients Take Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs

By 2010, an estimated 20% of the United States population will be 65 years old or older.  It’s this same age group that experiences the highest number of heart attacks and strokes but cholesterol-lowering drugs, which stave off these events, aren’t prescribed as often for people in this age bracket as they are for younger patients.  Researchers at Wayne State University have just published their research findings that  indicate these drugs are just as beneficial for older patients as they are for younger ones. Read more

Dream of the Future: Chocolate as Brain Food

As if chocolate lovers needed yet another reason to indulge guilt free, researchers from Harvard University and Mars, Incorporated, have released their findings that a naturally occurring substance in cocoa can actually bring long-term improvements to the flow of blood to the brain in ways that may have the potential of easing the damage of a stroke or slowing the progression of dementia.  Currently, one in seven older Americans is battling age-related dementia. Read more

Young Woman’s Every Cigarette Counts When Tallying Stroke Risk

While the evidence is unavoidably clear that smoking cigarettes increases a person’s risk of having a stroke, there is relatively little data that identifies the dosage amount that places a smoker in the danger zone. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have just announced the results of their study which quantified smoking habits with risk of stroke in young women between the ages of 15 and 49. Read more

Eat Fish Often for Mental Clarity in Senior Years

Researchers in Finland have just published their findings on a study that compared a diet rich in fish to a diet with little, if any, fish and discovered that the fishy diet eaters reduced their risk of stroke, with their rate of risk diminished where fish consumption was highest.  As long as the fish wasn’t fried, anyway. Read more

STRokE DOC Puts Experts at the Scene

One out of every three US residents lives in a rural area that makes getting immediate medical care in times of emergency a sometimes-risky predicament.  Speed of emergency medical care is especially important with medical emergencies such as stroke, a situation that benefits most from the earliest treatment. Read more

Kids’ Quality Sleep May Prevent Obesity, Diabetes

According to recently released information, the soaring rate of obesity in 6- to 11-year-old American children has tripled in just 30 years.  Alongside that dangerous rise in weight that threatens our nation’s children, a growing number of these children also suffer from chronic sleep deprivation.  The newly released study has found an important link between a child’s weight and his or her ability to get a good night’s rest. Read more

Life With a Partner Minimizes Alzheimer’s Risk

Men and women living with a partner in mid-life are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of age-related dementia, according to researchers presenting their study to colleagues at the 2008  Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Alzheimer’s Disease, the largest conference based on the disease in the world.  The conference is being held in Chicago this year. Read more

Statins Stave Off Dementia in High-Risk Group

Some medical situations increase the risk of developing dementia as we age but a University of Michigan (UM) study has proven that individuals taking the statin class of drugs to reduce “bad” cholesterol levels did not develop dementia as expected.  In fact, they were only about half as likely to develop dementia than study participants who had not taken statins. Read more

Strokes in Children Not the Same as in Adults

For the first time ever, the American Heart Association and the American Stroke Association have issued guidelines for dealing with strokes in infants and children, an event once thought so rare that such guidelines were not warranted.  New diagnostic tools and in-depth studies of the children who experience strokes, however, reveal the event is still uncommon but not so rare that similarities and specific characteristics cannot be documented.  And one very important factor in children’s strokes is that they are quite different from the strokes adults suffer; so different, in fact, that treatment and prevention measures are most effective when handled in an age-appropriate manner. Read more

Older Women’s Sleep Patterns Influence Risk of Stroke

When all other risk factors are relatively equal, postmenopausal women who sleep between seven and eight hours each night are less likely to experience an ischemic attack, or stroke, than women of the same age group who sleep less than seven hours.  And women of this age group who sleep nine hours or more each night are at an even greater risk of experiencing a stroke than women who sleep less, according to the report of a study that has just been published in Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association. Read more

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