Signs of a Silent Stroke Hard to Pin Down
Every year, more than 500,000 U.S. citizens are diagnosed by their doctors as having had a stroke making it one of the top health problems in the country. But along with the many major strokes are diagnosed, there are a huge number of silent strokes that are occurring as well.
A lot of of these mini-strokes remain undiagnosed because people are unaware that it’s happened. We often think of strokes as a dramatic event that immediately causes signs such as paralysis, being unable to talk, etc. Most so called silent strokes, however, do not trigger such symptoms.
A great deal of the time, the first clue that a person may have had a silent or mini-stroke occurs as they’re taking medical tests for some seemingly unrelated problems. In fact, a research study last year revealed that as many as many as 10 percent of people, having an average age of 62, showed evidence of a min-stroke based on their MRI brain scan.
A disturbing trend for the past 10 years or so, is that the number of incidences of these silent strokes seem to be happing at younger ages. It’s probably to be expected as certain other diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure are occurring in adults at earlier ages as well. The extremely disconcerting thing about the rising number of silent strokes is that many have them and don’t even realize it because they have no symptoms.
In fact, in most cases the only evidence that a silent stroke has occurred may be the printout on an MRI brain scan, which many people don’t have as a regular part of the annual checkup.
The truly sad part about this state of affairs is that many strokes are preventable simply by following sensible health guidelines on how to lower high blood pressure safely.
Melissa Chow is a freelance writer who writes articles relating to common natural cures for high blood pressure, and learning how to control high blood pressure. Please visit her site for more info.
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