Podcast: Understanding stroke and minimizing your risk

As an interventional neurologist, Dr. Aniel Majjhoo has experienced firsthand why strokes are considered true medical emergencies.

“Stroke in the United States, we know that it happens about every 40 seconds and every four minutes someone actually dies in our country from a stroke,” Dr. Majjhoo said during a recent interview in the McLaren In Good Health Podcast. “So that equates to about 130,000 stroke deaths per year and about 900,000 strokes per year.”

Dr. Majjhoo is specially trained and experienced in many of the procedures that alleviate life-threatening stroke symptoms, but he urges everyone to take steps to minimize their risk of stroke.

“I'm going to focus on the modifiable risk factors, the things that you can do something about. Some of the modifiable risk factors are things like hypertension or high blood pressure, hyperlipidemia or high cholesterol, smoking cigarettes, diabetes mellitus, atrial fibrillation and irregular heartbeat,” he said, “and of course, diet and exercise, and good healthy living diet and exercise daily exercise can help not only be beneficial for cardiovascular reasons, but also for the brain and strokes.”

Strokes present with the sudden onset of symptoms (such as facial weakness or slurred speech or arm weakness caused by an interruption of blood flow in the brain) making preventive measure essential to minimizing risk.

“It's the number five cause of death in our country,” Dr. Majjhoo said. “And this is the number one cause of morbidity, meaning people that are disabled and need rehabilitation in our country.”

Listen to Dr. Majjhoo and other McLaren physicians from varied specialties on the In Good Health Podcast.