You know you don’t want one. You know it’s dangerous. Even if a stroke doesn’t kill you, you could end up disabled, dependent, unable to return to your previous life. But what exactly is a stroke?
A stroke is what happens when a part of the brain doesn’t get enough blood flow. Blood carries oxygen and important nutrients around your body. A large percentage of it goes to your brain. If blood flow stops, the supply stops. Brain cells stop functioning and start to die. Whatever function those particular brain cells controlled, or contributed to, is lost.
Two Major Types of Stroke
There are two major types of stroke, ischemic and hemorrhagic.
Ischemic strokes, AKA infarcts or infarctions, occur when a blood vessel supplying blood to the brain, gets blocked by a clot or plaque. Blood can no longer get through to that part of the brain. The majority of strokes, about 85%, are ischemic.
Ischemic Stroke
There are two types of ischemic stroke: embolic and thrombotic.
Embolic strokes occur when a fragment of plaque or a blood clot forms somewhere else in your body. Blood clots sometimes form in peoples’ hearts. If the person has atrial fibrillation, a piece of the clot can break off and travel through the blood vessels until it reaches a blood vessel small enough to block its passage. Blocking a blood vessel in the brain can cause a stroke.
Thrombotic strokes occur when a clot forms inside a blood vessel that is in the brain, or on the way to the brain. It can happen in the larger blood vessels of the brain. High cholesterol contributes to this. It can also happen in the smaller blood vessels deeper in the brain. This type is linked closely to high blood pressure.
I hope you see how important it is to get treatment for high blood pressure and high cholesterol. And let’s not forget atrial fibrillation. Have you been told you have Afib? Did you know it could increase your risk of stroke? Do you now understand why?
Hemorrhagic Stroke
Hemorrhagic strokes happen when blood bursts into the brain. Hemorrhagic strokes account for about 15% of all strokes. But they are more deadly than ischemic strokes, responsible for approximately 40% of stroke deaths.
Again, there are two types…intracerebral and subarachnoid.
Intracerebral hemorrhages are more common. A blood vessel in the brain tissue ruptures and blood spills into the surrounding brain. This is very damaging to brain tissues, especially as there isn’t much extra space within your skull. Brain cells are crushed.They stop working and die. That part of the brain swells, taking up more room and pressing on other brain areas. It’s important to get medical treatment ASAP to stop this domino effect of more and more brain tissue injury, swelling and death.
And do you know which is the most common contributing cause of intracerebral hemorrhage?
High Blood Pressure!
So if you have high blood pressure, AKA hypertension, take care of it. Manage it. Do everything you can to get it as close to the normal range as possible. That may mean diet, exercise, weight loss. Maybe it means medications. It certainly means see your health care provider. You probably won’t know you have high blood pressure. Most people feel fine, until that sudden stroke!
That’s why hypertension is the silent killer.
Don’t let it get you!
Every day…..Say NO To Stroke!
