Having a very active leisure time can reduce the chances of having a stroke from blood clots, often called ischemic stroke. Researchers from National Public Health Institute in Helsinki, Finland, had reported these findings in the journal Stroke: Journal of the American Heart Association.
Researchers had looked into the data provided by 47,721 people of Finland in the age group of 25 to 64 years, all of them healthy and without any previous history of coronary heart disease, stroke or cancer. The factors researchers had considered for their studies were medical history, socioeconomic factors, alcohol consumption, physical activities undertaken during work and at leisure time, etc. in the follow up of 19 years, there were 2863 cases of strokes reported.The results of the study had showed that participants who had described their leisure time physical activities as moderate, where they had been active for more than four hours a week, had a 26% lower risk of stroke than participants who had remained completely inactive in their leisure and the whole day except for activities at work.
The risk of subarachnoid stroke was 54% lower in people who had remained highly active in their leisure hours. For these people the risk from intracerebral hemorrhage was less by 37% in comparison to people with moderate activity level whose risk only lowers by 23%.
Researchers recommend daily walking or cycling to work and back as a measure to reduce the chances of having an ischemic stroke. For the people who remain sedentary during the working hours, researchers recommend them taking a break in between work for some sort of physical exercises.
Source: EurekAlert
Medindia on Stroke: further information
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