16.5M Americans at risk of stroke from exercising too hard: study

The stroke isn't caused by blocked carotid arteries, it's caused by rupturing the plaque and sending clots to your brain. So you need to know the stability of your plaque. 

This might be the answer: calcified plaque

A better way to predict heart attacks and strokes in space  August 2018

What is your doctor doing to clear that plaque?  Stenting doesn't clear anything.

Do you want the lawnmower?
Lawnmower For Clogged Arteries
Or Drano? I would be worried about this, sloughing off chunks
Drano For Clogged Arteries
Or conventional?
9 Complications With Coronary Artery Bypass Surgery

Or this?

Israeli study uses gold particles to ‘seek and destroy’ artery blockages

But I'd rather my doctor told me how much watermelon juice to drink.

Watermelon juice reverses hardening of the arteries  Nov. 2011

I'm not medically trained so nothing here should be brought to your doctor's attention because they being completely up-to-date will already know about it.

The latest here:

16.5M Americans at risk of stroke from exercising too hard: study

Push it — but not too hard.

Nearly 16.5 million Americans are at risk of stroke from exercising too hard, a new study found.

Published in the scientific journal Physics of Fluid, researchers concluded that an elevated heart rate can induce a stroke in those with blocked carotid arteries.

Carotid arteries are located on both sides of the neck and provide blood flow to the face and the brain.

But when fat and cholesterol build up, they form a plaque that narrows the artery, a process called stenosis. Stenosis can be very difficult to detect early on and is dangerous because it limits blood flow to the brain, which can lead to a stroke.

An estimated 16.5 million (5%) Americans are estimated to experience carotid artery stenosis, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

Those who smoke, are obese, live a sedentary lifestyle and have high blood pressure, high cholesterol or diabetes are more likely to suffer from carotid artery stenosis. It can also develop with age.

A recent study found that the 16.5 million Americans who suffer from carotid artery stenosis are at risk of stroke from exercising too hard.

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Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur concluded that an elevated heart rate can induce a stroke in those with blocked carotid arteries.

Getty Images/iStockphoto

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur used a computational model to simulate blood flow in carotid arteries at three stages of stenosis: without blockage, with a mild 30% blockage and with a moderate 50% blockage.

They compared the effect of an exercise-induced heart rate at 140 beats per minute, which can be achieved by a brisk walk for some obese people, and resting heart rates of 67 and 100 bpm.

Healthy patients and those with only slightly blocked arteries appeared to have exercise be beneficial for maintaining healthy blood flow.

However, the results for those with moderate to severe blockage were concerning.

“Intense exercise shows adverse effects on patients with moderate or higher stenosis levels,” said author Somnath Roy.

“It substantially increases the shear stress at the stenosis zone, which may cause the stenosis to rupture. This ruptured plaque may then flow to the brain and its blood supply, causing ischemic stroke.”

The researchers concluded that “while stressful exercises may be beneficial for improving the cardiac performance of healthy individuals, the same may bring in extremely adverse consequences … for patients having extensive arterial blockages.”

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A better way to predict heart attacks and strokes in space

Now if we can just bring these back down to earth. None of the existing stroke risk calculators identified me as being at any risk for stroke. Remember the Antarctic researcher who had a stroke in

Trouble at South Pole: 'Get me out of here' urges manager who suffered a stroke.

Of course by the time the stroke was identified there was nothing anyone could do to help recovery. There are NO protocols anywhere that get survivors close to 100% recovery.  Currently you are completely fucking screwed if you have a stroke. Your stroke medical professionals and stroke associations will lie to you about that fact but they will never provide any solutions until they are removed from power.

A better way to predict heart attacks and strokes in space

Researchers may have developed a more reliable way to predict the risk of heart attack and stroke in astronauts – and the technique may eventually help gauge the same danger for regular folks on Earth, too.

NASA astronauts currently undergo a special screening method that scans coronary arteries for a buildup of calcified plaque. This calcium scan, which is not routinely done in clinical practice, is a powerful tool in assessing cardiovascular risk. Yet scientists have had trouble integrating the results from these scans with traditional risk factors for heart disease, such as high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes and family history of heart attack.

But researchers have developed a new equation that combines the calcium scan scores with those well-established risk factors. The result is a more accurate way to predict a person’s risk for having a stroke or developing heart disease within the next 10 years, according to findings published Monday in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

“The application for NASA is incredibly important. You can imagine if someone had a heart attack in space, it would be catastrophic for the person and the mission,” said Dr. Amit Khera, a cardiologist and the lead author of the study.

“But we were kind of serving two masters in this project. Obviously for NASA, it's a tool they need to help in decision-making for astronauts in their missions,” said Khera, a professor of medicine at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. “But for terrestrial medicine as well, it has lots of potential applications in terms of helping us predict better who's at risk for heart attack and stroke, and who might need more intensive treatments.”

The new risk scoring system is the first to help predict both heart disease and stroke, said Dr. Michael Blaha, a cardiologist not involved in the new study. It also looked at a younger age group than a similar heart disease risk calculator developed several years ago that also incorporated calcium scan results. That calculator, which Blaha helped develop, was based on patients at an average age of 65. In the new study, the average age was 51.

“It’s been clear within the last several years that the calcium score by far adds the most risk-predictive value on top of traditional risk factors, and this study helps confirm that,” said Blaha, director of clinical research for the Johns Hopkins Ciccarone Center for the Prevention of Heart Disease in Baltimore.

“I like this new risk score. The only thing I’m not certain of is where it will fit in and what the clinical impact will be,” he said. “I don’t know how unique will it be in the space of risk prediction tools, which is already crowded.”

For astronauts and other professions that come with a high level of danger, better cardiovascular risk calculators can be crucial. But having such tools available for the general population could help improve medical efficiency, Khera said.

Doctors already rely on certain risk factors to help gauge the need for prescriptions such as cholesterol-reducing statins or whether they should suggest a daily aspirin regimen for patients, he said. A new risk calculator could help medical professionals refine those assessments.

“Hopefully, we can eventually apply this tool in office-based practices to … communicate better [with patients] about their risk and do that with more accuracy, so we can determine what might be the best treatment for them,” Khera said.
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