Host: What are some preventable risk factors for a stroke?

Dr. Nina Solenski: The things that we can change have to do with our lifestyle. The number one is our nutrition. Are we eating healthily? Are we paying attention to what we are eating? Nowadays we have the luxury of having all the ingredients on the sides of every single food item in the grocery store. So looking at fat contents, making sure that we avoid saturated fats, looking at salt content and making sure that it's a low salt content is very important. The reason being is that these predispose us to high cholesterol, that's one risk factor. They predispose us to Diabetes and high blood pressure and those are probably three of the more common risk factors of stroke. Other things that we can do is to try to avoid becoming overweight and certainly to the point that we become obese and lastly cigarette smoking and tobacco use in general, and it's a very powerful risk factor for stroke. I mentioned earlier in an earlier sequence the small blood vessels, cigarette smoking is known to occur and cause that narrowing in the blood vessels very prominently in these little small blood vessels.