Researchers report that your odds of ever suffering a stroke depend largely on your blood pressure in middle age and beyond.
No matter how good your health is, it's important to prevent any rise in blood pressure. The main reason is that blood pressure can cause damage to your body when it goes above 110/70 mm Hg -- long before hypertension is diagnosed. In addition, if you keep your pressure at a normal level, you won’t need to take blood pressure medication, which can have side effects and be financially costly over time. Last, people with hypertension who bring their blood pressure down to normal levels with medication still have a higher risk of hypertension complications than individuals who do not require drugs to keep their blood pressure within the normal range.
Now a study in the journal Stroke (Volume 37, page 345 ) reveals yet another good reason to keep your blood pressure under control. Researchers report that your odds of ever suffering a stroke depend largely on your blood pressure in middle age and beyond.
In a decades-long study of nearly 5,000 adults age 55 and older, researchers found that men and women with normal blood pressure (less than 120/80 mm Hg) were about half as likely as those with hypertension to suffer a stroke at some point in their lives.
Overall, men had a one in six chance of ever having a stroke, while the odds for women were one in five. Women face a greater lifetime risk than men, mainly because of their generally longer life expectancy. But blood pressure control was key in lowering stroke risk: Women with normal blood pressure at age 65 had a one in six chance of ever suffering a stroke, while men with normal blood pressure at age 65 had a one in 10 odds.
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To put the health threat of strokes into perspective, the researchers also calculated the participants’ lifetime risk of Alzheimer's disease. Only among women older than age 85 was the risk of Alzheimer's greater than the risk of stroke.
The take home message: Keeping your blood pressure under control after age 55 is an important part of reducing your risk of a stroke. So closely follow your doctor’s recommendations for lowering blood pressure.
