“The good physician treats the disease; the great physician treats the patient who has the disease.”
Sir William Osler
Stroke is supposed to be a disease that only affects the elderly. Unfortunately, I have seen numerous young patients with the strokes. Some of them had typical causes of strokes in young age, such as arterial dissections, but a vast majority of those patients had the same risk factors as my elderly patients such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol,
In the last decade, it has been well documented that about 70% of all strokes can be attributed to our lifestyle, not because we age faster. It is believed that poor choices in lifestyle and nutrition are major contributors to strokes.
Our efforts should focus on management of these short-comings in addition to medical management of the diseases.
I believe that by the time the patient has a stroke, it is often too late to solely focus on lifestyle. Medical management is required as well. I have seen that the best results can be achieved by the combination of these two approaches and I have numerous patients to prove these benefits.
Stroke Prevention
There are two types of stroke prevention, primary (if you have never had a stroke and do not desire to have one) and secondary (if you already had one and really would prefer to avoid another one)
Primary Prevention
Primary prevention of stroke would consist of adjustment of lifestyle and nutrition. Our everyday stressors are one of the major driving forces for the developement of strokes. Our poor nutrition choices causes developoment of other diseases, like diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol, which in turn will cause a stroke.
Secondary Prevention
After you had a stroke, there are two primary goals:
1. To treat existing stroke (with either clot buster or neurointerventional procedure) and provide supportive care and all the therapies that are needed to help you to recovery as much as you can.
2. Find the reason/reasons why did the stroke happen and provide medical management of those issues.
This is where the management is getting dicey. Very commonly will find hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes among other problems and patient gets referred to his primary physician for management of that. So there is always some disconnect between neurological care and primary care.
In my clinic, I will look at all medical issues and make sure that all of them are well controlled. Although I am a not primarily manage hypertension and diabetes but I will provide monitoring of those issues in addition to primary physician, which improves quality of care for the patient.
At the same time, we will be discussing lifestyle and nutritional changes that led to development of stroke risk factors to start with.
Request Clinic Evaluation
If you are interested in more comprehensive approach to prevention of the stroke whether primary or secondary, please click the button below to request an appointment in light of my staff members will contact you to schedule an appointment.