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A stroke occurs when the blood supply to your brain is blocked, preventing oxygen and nutrients from reaching your brain tissue and ultimately killing brain cells. Every forty seconds, someone in the United States has a stroke, and every four minutes, someone dies from it, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Of course, these numbers represent averages, not actual medical emergencies occurring consistently throughout the day. In fact, research shows that the distribution is more uneven than you might think: you are 80% more likely to have a stroke in one hour of the day compared to all others.
Being aware of the riskiest times for a stroke might help you connect the dots to recognize symptoms earlier. Being extra vigilant for warning signs during these hours – numbness or weakness on one side of the body, confusion, speech or vision problems, dizziness or severe headaches with no known cause – could literally save your life. Read on to find out when you’re most likely to have a stroke and what you can do to lower your risk!
RELATED: If You Notice This While Walking, It Could Be The First Sign Of A Stroke.
According to a study published by the American Heart Association in Stroke, you are almost 80% more likely to have a stroke between 6 a.m. and noon than later in the day. “There was a 49% increase in strokes of all types between 6 a.m. and noon, which is a 79% increase over the normalized risk for the other 18 hours of the day,” the researchers explain. . They say that this “morning excess” of stroke is an example of “circadian variation,” differences in risk that vary with your body’s 24-hour circadian cycle.
For the study, the team conducted a meta-analysis of 31 publications with primary data from 11,816 stroke patients. “Despite fairly large differences between studies in reported sample size (59 to 1,075), outcomes (fatal versus non-fatal), and types of strokes studied (ischemic versus hemorrhagic versus others), the Most studies have shown a similar daytime pattern of stroke incidence, ”the researchers say.
Conversely, the team found a rate of 35 percent decrease strokes occurring between midnight and 6 a.m. compared to the other 18 hours of the day.
RELATED: Drinking One Cup Of This A Day May Lower Your Stroke Risk, New Study Finds.
Because the data was so vast and varied, the research team was able to analyze the time of day for stroke in several different ways. In a sub-analysis, they isolated different types of stroke to see if they had stronger or weaker correlations with the time of day.
They found that some types of stroke had more circadian variation than others, but all types were even more likely to occur in the morning. “The data are remarkably consistent between the different stroke subtypes and indicate, for ischemic strokes, hemorrhagic strokes and even transient ischemic attacks, that the excessive risk during the 6 a.m. to noon period is significantly higher. higher than you might expect by chance: 89%, 52% and 80%, ”the team says.
In other words, the most common type of stroke, ischemic stroke, is not 80, but almost 90 percent more likely to occur during those early hours of the morning.
Discussing the limitations of their study, the AHA researchers noted that they had not adjusted the data to account for the individual waking times of the study subjects. Because of this, they say their study may have failed to capture “strokes that occur in people who work at night or in the evening, who have higher blood pressure upon getting up, but not in the morning. typical period from 6 to 8 am “.
Other studies have provided evidence to suggest that waking time can have a significant impact on when a patient is most likely to have a stroke. For example, a study published in the journal Cerebrovascular disease found that your chances of having a stroke differ depending on whether you are working or going on vacation.
“The onset of ischemic stroke peaked between 6 and 8 a.m. on working days and between 8 and 10 a.m. on [time off]. The strokes occurred more often during the 2 hours after waking up than at any other time of the day ”, explains this team.
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High blood pressure is considered one of the most important risk factors for stroke, and regulating blood pressure is key to preventing it, experts say. This is important because the researchers behind the AHA study note that blood pressure typically rises by about 20 percent after a person wakes up in the morning. Study authors say that using drugs to “target increased blood pressure and heart rate early in the morning, without drastically lowering blood pressure at night, may be more beneficial” in controlling it. .
Another study published in the European Heart Journal concluded that taking high blood pressure medication at bedtime can halve the risk of stroke. Study participants who took their medications at bedtime (rather than at another time of day) were also 34% less likely to have a heart attack, 40% less likely to need a procedure to widen blocked arteries and 42% less likely to develop a failed heart.
However, the same treatment is not for everyone, so talk to your healthcare provider before making any changes to your medication routine.
RELATED: Half of Stroke Victims Notice It A Week Earlier, Study Finds.
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