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Medical Video: Why are Young Women at Risk for Strokes?
Women have a higher risk of stroke than men, but this can be reduced while maintaining health throughout life.
Taking birth control pills can affect a woman's risk of stroke. Migraine and menopause is also one of the factors that trigger stroke. Although women have a higher risk of stroke than men (stroke is number three death in women, while in men is the fifth cause of death) many women do not realize that they have a number of risk-triggering factors.
If you are a woman, you have many of the same risk factors for stroke with men, but your risk is also influenced by hormones, reproductive health, pregnancy, childbirth and other factors related to gender.
High blood pressure, high cholesterol, and smoking are risk factors for stroke for both women and men. But other risk factors include migraine with aura, atrial fibrillation, diabetes, depression, and emotional stress, usually more common in women.
Pregnancy also causes its own risk factors for stroke. Women who have experienced preeclampsia, aka high blood pressure conditions during pregnancy, have a risk of stroke two times greater and the risk of high blood pressure four times greater in the future.
Therefore, women with a history of high blood pressure should consider using low-dose aspirin and calcium supplements while pregnant. Women should also be examined for high blood pressure conditions before using birth control pills, because they can combine and increase the risk of stroke. Overall, the risk of stroke in women will be higher after entering menopause, because menopause increases the risk of high blood pressure.
The researchers added that further research needs to be done to develop a stroke risk assessment system for women. An estimated 53.5% of new or recurrent strokes occur in women each year, and more than 55,000 women die from strokes each year compared to men.
However, deaths from stroke as a whole are at a level of decline. Experts attribute this phenomenon to the fewer people who smoke and there is a greater effort to control conditions such as diabetes and hypertension.
Women have been considered at risk of stroke lower than men because of the possibility of lower obesity. However, the latest data shows that women now 61.8% tend to have a higher risk of obesity compared to 43.7% percent of men. Women are also more likely to become obese before menopause than in the past.
The results of the research report suggest that there needs to be further understanding of how obesity and excess fat in the stomach can affect the risk of different strokes in men and women. The results of this study are expected to provide deeper insight into more effective stroke prevention.
