Improve Your Health Blog

There is a new screening method for stroke which may help determine if a person has a high risk of getting it. The new test makes use of a technology similar to ultrasound.

The number of people suffering from stroke is around 800,000 every year in the US alone. One sixth of these patients succumb to the attack while a lot of them go thru significant disability.

The test will allow doctors and health experts separate patients who have clogged blood vessels in the neck, those who are highly like to suffer a stroke, and those who are not at risk. In turn this will help determine who needs to go thru the surgery which will help clean up the cholesterol blocking the arteries.

The proponents of the study reiterate though that the test must be correlated with other studies.

The new screening test will be making use of two kinds of ultrasound which basically will scan for the carotid arteries and the blood vessels on the brain itself. The screening will take around ninety minutes to finish. The results are also a bit difficult to interpret.

The surgery to remove cholesterol buildup is also somewhat controversial since , in Canada and the United States, there are a lot of patients who undergo the surgery without even showing significant symptoms.

The study involved 428 patients who were diagnosed with clogged carotids but are still symptom free. They were subjected to the scans and observed for two years. The patients who showed warning signs after the scan had a 9% risk for stroke while majority had less than a percent of risk.

The clogged carotid blood vessels may contribute to stroke but subjecting patients who had no or very few symptoms to cholesterol cleanup may prove to be hazardous. There is also a study that shows 95% of patients without symptoms are better off without going thru surgery and another study that doing something to them may trigger a fatal stroke.

Experts are saying now that with this new scanning tests, scanning a lot of people for risk may prove not to be too helpful as this may lead to a lot of unnecessary surgical operations.

Running is among the top choices of people around the globe to stay In shape. A recent study in New York suggests that running in long distances is beneficial in keeping the blood pressure, the blood cholesterol and the blood glucose in its normal and healthy level.

In a survey done with a base of approximately 100,000 male and female subjects who ran, it was found out that those who ran in marathons were less likely to take treatment regimens for hypertension, diabetes and high cholesterol.

Dr. Paul T. Williams of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California said that the results of the survey are suggesting that there is a great advantage in running in long distances. The study was published in the Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise journal.

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