Each year in the United States, approximately 700,000 people experience the devastating effects of a stroke.  Most of those strokes, about 87% of them, are ischemic strokes, which are caused when an artery to the brain becomes blocked.  The loss…

Doctors attribute several factors to the stroke suffered by an unidentified 35-year-old woman who began feeling weakness in her left arm just minutes after engaging in sexual intercourse. The very act of sex itself causes changes in blood pressure but…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

Nobody likes secondhand smoke (SHS).  It’s annoying, nasty, and it can make nonsmokers sick.  Being around it a lot can increase a nonsmoker’s risk of coronary heart disease.  A newly released study provides evidence it can increase the risk of…

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…

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…

More than 10% of a large group of middle-aged study participants who appeared otherwise healthy said they’d never had a stroke, either, but brain scans revealed evidence of silent cerebral infarction (SCI), also called a silent stroke.  Even though they…

According to a new study, male smokers can reduce their risk of cerebral infarction, or stroke, by 15% by increasing dietary intake of magnesium rich foods. The most significant effect was found in men younger than age 60. Magnesium intake…

A study published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine suggests that postmenopausal women who take hormone therapy have an increased risk of stroke. The study, which was conducted by Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, evaluated…

Statistics on longevity in the United States have indicated an increase in expected life span that began in the 1960s and rose steadily until 2000. Now, newer statistics, gleaned from a study conducted over an extensive period of time, reveals…

Men in the U.S. are 61 percent more likely to suffer a stroke than European men. U.S. women have almost twice the likelihood of suffering a stroke than European women. These statistics were recently provided through a study at the…