The Diet That Reduces Stroke Risk By Up To 25% In Women

The Mediterranean Diet is considered by many to be the current “gold standard” of healthy eating, and with good reason. With 10,000+ studies underpinning it and counting, it has a pretty hefty weight of evidence.

(For contrast, the Ketogenic Diet for example has under 5,000 studies at time of writing,and many of those include mentioning the problems with it. That’s not to say the Keto is without its merits! It certainly can help achieve some short term goals, but that’s getting a little off-topic here so we’ll not derail)

Wondering what the Mediterranean Diet consists of? We outlined it in a previous main feature, so here it is for your convenience:

The Mediterranean Diet: What Is It Good For? ← also covers which foods actually go into it, and which don’t 😎

To get us started today, we’ll quickly drop some links to a few of those Mediterranean Diet studies from the top:

• Definition of the Mediterranean Diet; a Literature Review
• Mediterranean Diet In Healthy Aging
• Cancer and Mediterranean Diet: A Review
• Impact of Mediterranean Diet on Chronic Non-Communicable Diseases and Longevity
• Mediterranean diet and cardiovascular disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies
• Adherence to Mediterranean diet and health status: meta-analysis

The short version is: it glows, in a good way.

There’s nothing mid about about the Med when it comes to the mind

For that matter, there is also a brain-focused set of tweaks to the Mediterranean diet!

The MIND (Mediterranean-DASH Intervention for Neurodegenerative Delay) diet also adds extra portions of specific brain-foods, that already exist in the above diets, but get a more substantial weighting in this one:

MIND and Mediterranean diets linked to fewer signs of Alzheimer’s brain pathology

See also: The cognitive effects of the MIND diet

And now, most recently, researchers (Dr. Ayesha Sherzai et al.) did a prospective cohort analysis in which she and her team followed 105,614 women for an average of 20.5 years (in the longitudinal study sense, not in the stalker sense) and found that higher adherence to a Mediterranean diet was associated with a lower risk of total, ischemic, and hemorrhagic stroke.

How much lower, you ask?

Well, the title of today’s article is a bit of a giveaway, but let’s break it down. During follow-up there were 4,083 strokes in total, including 3,358 ischemic strokes and 725 hemorrhagic strokes, and…

• Overall stroke risk: high adherence was associated with a 18% lower risk of any stroke, even after adjusting for smoking, physical activity, high blood pressure, and other factors.
• Ischemic stroke: high adherence was associated with a 16% lower risk of ischemic stroke, the most common type caused by blocked blood flow to the brain.
• Hemorrhagic stroke: high adherence was associated with a 25% lower risk of hemorrhagic stroke, a less frequent but more severe type caused by bleeding in the brain.

So, all in all, very good news!

You can read the paper in full, here: Mediterranean Diet and the Risk of Stroke Subtypes in Women

So, with that in mind…

• Want to make it even better? See: Better Than The Mediterranean?
• Want to do it with much less effort? See: Mediterranean Diet… In A Pill?
• Want to know what else you can do? See: Reduce Your Stroke Risk

Want to learn more?

Everyone even vaguely health-conscious knows that prevention is better than cure, but many still don’t think about a lot of things until they’re too late.

To be ahead of that curve, check out:

Don’t Get Caught Out By These “Nontraditional” Stroke Risk Factors

And, for that matter,

6 Signs Of Stroke (One Month In Advance)

Take care!