Deans' stroke musings: Are All “Healthy Diets” Equal for Stroke Prevention?

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Are All “Healthy Diets” Equal for Stroke Prevention?

Impossible to tell since none are objective and have EXACT PROTOCOLS!

Are All “Healthy Diets” Equal for Stroke Prevention?

Anel Karisik, MD

Castro-Barquero S, Rimm EB, Jovin TG, Martínez-González MA, Salas-Salvadó J, Corella D, Arós F, Serra-Majem L, Fitó M, Pintó X, et al. Adherence to Different Dietary Patterns and Subsequent Risk of Total, Ischemic, and Hemorrhagic Stroke. Stroke. 2026;57:945–956.

Eating healthy is supposed to protect the heart — but do all "heart-healthy" dietary patterns protect equally well against stroke? A new analysis from the PREDIMED trial takes on this question and delivers surprisingly clear answers. Castro-Barquero et al. compared four widely promoted dietary patterns — Mediterranean, DASH, MIND, and the Planetary Health Diet — in over 7,000 high-risk individuals over a median follow-up of 4.3 years. The result: Those participants in the highest quintile of cumulative adherence had approximately 75% lower stroke risk than those in the lowest quintile. For DASH and the Planetary Health Diet, only non-significant trends emerged.

Graphic abstract in Castro-Barquero et al.

The MIND diet combines Mediterranean principles with a focus on brain health — and performs on par with classic Mediterranean eating. One possible explanation is that these dietary patterns share several components, including plant-based foods, olive oil, and nuts. That said, caution is warranted. Because this was a post hoc observational analysis of adherence within a randomized trial, causal inference regarding the dietary scores themselves remains limited. Those with higher dietary adherence were also generally healthier and more physically active; residual confounding cannot be ruled out. Only 135 stroke events were available for analysis, which limits statistical power, particularly for subgroup comparisons. And the cohort consisted of older, high-risk individuals in Spain, which constrains generalizability.

Nevertheless, this study strengthens the case for Mediterranean and MIND dietary patterns in stroke prevention, without the differences between diet scores being over-interpreted. The real message remains simple: Overall dietary quality appears important, but in this cohort, the strongest evidence supported Mediterranean and MIND dietary patterns.