Lifestyle Can Reduce Women’s Stroke Risk

U.S. women who do not smoke, exercise regularly, have a healthy diet, have moderate alcohol consumption and live a healthy lifestyle may reduce stroke risk.

Dr. Tobias Kurth of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues studied the association between healthy lifestyles and stroke risk in 37,636 women age 45 years or older.

At the beginning of the study, in 1993, the women answered questions about their smoking habits, alcohol consumption, diet, exercise routine and body mass index, and each woman was given a health index score that ranged from zero to 20, with a higher score indicating a healthier lifestyle.

Healthy behavior was defined as never smoking, consuming four to 10.5 alcoholic drinks per week, exercising four or more times per week, having a body mass index of less than 22 and maintaining a healthy diet such as eating cereal fiber, folate and omega-3 fatty acids and low levels of trans fat and glycemic load.

In this large prospective cohort of apparently healthy women, a healthy lifestyle was associated with a substantial and statistically significant reduction in the risk of total and ischemic stroke with no apparent benefit in the incidence of hemorrhagic stroke, the authors conclude in the Archives of Internal Medicine.