Healthy Diet Cuts Women’s Stroke Risk By 50%
A healthier lifestyle can substantially reduce the risk of stroke, especially cerebral infarction, according to a new study in Neurology.
Swedish researchers found that women with a healthy diet and lifestyle may be more than 50% less likely to have a stroke.
They examined data from a study of 31,696 Swedish women who completed a 350-item questionnaire about their diet and lifestyle. The average age of participants was 60, and they were followed for an average of 10 years.
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The study looked at five factors that make up a healthy lifestyle:
• Never smoking.
• Healthy diet, defined as ranking within the top 50% of a recommended food score that measured how often the participants ate healthy foods, such as fruits, vegetables, and low-fat dairy products.
• Moderate alcohol consumption, defined as 3 to 9 drinks per week.
• Physically active, defined as walking or biking at least 40 minutes a day along with more vigorous exercise at least 1 hour per week.
• Healthy body mass index below 25.
Only 589 women demonstrated all five healthy factors—and 1,535 had none. Compared with women with none of the five healthy factors, women with all five factors had a 54% lower risk of stroke and a 62% lower risk of cerebral infarction.
“It was surprising that only about 2% of the women followed all five healthy lifestyle behaviors,” said study author Susanna C. Larsson, PhD, associate professor at the Karolinska Instituet in Stockholm, Sweden. “Although achieving all five healthy lifestyle behaviors led to the greatest reduction in stroke risk, achieving one or a few is better than achieving none of them.”
There were 1,554 strokes among study participants, and the risk of stroke steadily decreased with each additional healthy lifestyle factor. Most of the women had two or three of the healthy factors.
“Even those who achieved one or a few of the healthy lifestyle factors had a lower risk of stroke compared to those who achieved none,” Larsson says. “For example, women who adhered to 2 of the 5 lifestyle factors had, on average, a 24% reduction in stroke risk.”
Never smoking was the lifestyle factor most strongly related to a lower risk of stroke, with a 17% lower risk among women who never smoked. Maintaining a healthy body weight (BMI below 25 kg/m2) and eating a varied and healthy diet were each associated with a 13% lower risk of cerebral infarction—the most common type of ischemic stroke.
While healthy lifestyle was associated with a significantly lower risk of cerebral infarction and total stroke in this cohort of women, the researchers did not observe an association between healthy lifestyle and risk of hemorrhagic stroke.
Larsson and her colleagues plan to examine whether a healthy lifestyle has a similar impact on stroke risk in men.
—Colleen Mullarkey
Reference
Larsson SC, Åkesson A, Wolk A. Healthy diet and lifestyle and risk of stroke in a prospective cohort of women. Neurology. 2014 Oct 8. [Epub ahead of print].