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Heart Disease In The News Expert panel emphasizes risk factors for stroke In the January 9 issue of Circulation, experts from the American Stroke Association published a comprehensive list of risk factors for stroke, emphasizing those risk factors over which individuals have control. The two factors most clearly associated with stroke are smoking (including inhaling second hand smoke), and hypertension. Additional risk factors, whose relationship to stroke is not as well documented, include obesity, lack of exercise, and poor nutrition. Smokers who quit reduce their risk of excess stroke by half after one year, and completely after avoiding tobacco for five years. Adequate treatment of hypertension (which many Americans have but don't know it) has similar dramatic benefits. |
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