Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk about the top 10 warning signs of a stroke and the
things that you can figure out a week before it happens and one of the signs is loss of
consciousness so how would that come about that seems pretty drastic well what is a stroke that
is when the brain is deprived of oxygen and that's a big deal because the brain is only two percent
of your body weight but it uses 20 percent or more of your energy so it is incredibly highly
metabolically active it's working all the time whether you're awake or asleep and therefore
if it doesn't get the oxygen that has drastic consequences so if it's losing oxygen for even
10 seconds then you're going to go unconscious so it's not like you're just holding your breath
because then the blood and the oxygen is still circulating you're just not adding any new but
with the stroke it's a complete loss for a portion of the brain and if that lasts 10 seconds you can
go unconscious if that goes on for four to six minutes now we get permanent brain damage those
cells that have been deprived for that length of time they are dead and they're not coming back
and there are two types of Strokes primarily both of them obviously have to do with lack of oxygen
the first is ischemic which means lack of blood and that accounts for about 87 percent of all the
strokes and the other kind that is even worse is called hemorrhagic that means a bleeding stroke
which is the other 13 now both of these are devastating but the ischemic will kill people
almost immediately three percent of the time now it usually involves a loss of quality of life
there's a rehabilitation but for the most part you can restore all or most of the function after
an ischemic stroke however with a hemorrhagic stroke more than 50 percent of people are going
to be dead either immediately after or a short time a few months or a year after the stroke and
then there's something called a transient ischemic attack or a TIA and this has a long in common with
Strokes in the way they show up but this one is a temporary setback because it lasts less than five
minutes so if the oxygen deprivation is severe but not permanent if it lasts a shorter time than
the four to six minute it takes to kill off brain tissue then we can recover from it so here's the
difference between these three the first one is called the ischemic and very often these strokes
happen at a portion when there's a junction when we go from a bigger blood vessel to a smaller
so we have a clot an embolus a clump a blood clot that travels and the first portion of the
blood vessel is big enough that it's just flowing with the blood but then it gets into a smaller
portion and it gets stuck so now it blocks off that smaller portion and everything that is beyond
everything that's distal to this blood vessel all of these cells get no blood supply and after
several minutes that tissue dies and then the even worse stroke which is called hemorrhagic and now
what happens it's not necessarily at a portion where there's a junction but it is a point where
there is a weakening or where there's a turn of a blood vessel where there's a lot of friction
there's just constant pounding and now the blood vessel breaks and this blood flows outside of the
blood vessels and it just starts spilling into the brain tissue and now because it's in the
wrong place it starts filling up between the bone and the brain and it starts creating pressure on
top of the fact that the blood isn't going where it's supposed to and the Third Kind which is the
transient ischemic attack might look like this and here again we have a clot or we could have maybe
some plaquing where there's a narrowing so now if we have a vasoconstriction or some Factor that's
going to occlude to put some pressure increase the pressure and reduce the flow then that could be
severe enough that we temporarily get a blockage or it could be a clot that gets stuck but it's
not severe enough that it's going to completely occlude it maybe this breaks up and gets washed
out or it gets dissolved after a little bit they don't really know exactly how these things happen
but the key here to understand is whatever the reason that we get a blockage or reduction in
blood flow it's temporary and if that doesn't last long enough to kill off the blood cells now
we can get back to normal and these typically get a full recovery so the transient ischemic attack
is temporary and the time period that the oxygen deprivation actually lasts that it's cut off could
be anywhere from seconds to a few minutes but less than five minutes however the symptoms people are
usually having a really bad day and it could be minutes or up to 24 hours and in some cases even
a little bit longer for people to fully recover and a lot of times when people think they have
transient ischemic attacks and they think they're fully recovered if they do some Imaging they'll
see that it actually was a small stroke and this happens in as many as 40 percent of the time but
if there's no permanent damage or if people don't know that they have any permanent damage then why
is this still so important why does it still matter because the Tia is also called a mini
stroke or a pre-stroke or a warning stroke so that's the key word it's a warning it tells us
of something and about one-third of the people who have a TIA will go on to have a full stroke
with permanent damage within a year and to look at it from the other direction in one study they
found that the people actually had had a full stroke 43 percent of them had had a TIA within
seven days so obviously the earlier that you address this the better off you are because if
it happens within seven days there may not be a whole lot of time to do something about it but if
it takes upwards of a year then there's plenty of things that you can do to reduce the risk but the
other thing to understand is that a lot of medical conditions are under reported because doctors and
statisticians only know about them when people tell about them so a lot of people are going to
kind of stick their head in the sand it's just human nature especially with men that we have
this little thing it only lasts a few seconds and we'd rather not tell about it because if we ignore
it then it's like it never happens so I believe that these things are tremendously underreported
especially the small stuff that happens early on the really big stuff that we get worried about
or we fall over or somebody else gets notice of that we end up in the emergency room those
probably get reported but the little stuff in the beginning is probably grossly underreported
so I believe and this is just my opinion that if we really paid attention to the symptoms we're
going to talk about signs and symptoms then I believe the majority of people will have some
warning signs that we can pick up on early on and one of the most classic signs of a pretty
severe stroke is weakness or paralysis and the way it's going to show up it's going to be sudden and
that's a key feature of all these things that they happen Suddenly It's like out of the blue
and it often happens unilaterally when we're talking about a weakness or paralysis which
means it affects one side of the body because we really have two brains in one head and they're
just connected by a little stalk in between in the middle but the right side of the brain controls
the left side of the body so if we get this weakness or Paralysis on the left side of the body
then we know that it's the right brain that had the stroke and this could happen typically where
we're going to notice it mostly it's going to be in the face the arm or the leg because if it's the
face we're going to see it or we're going to feel it immediately and obviously with an arm and a
leg if we can't move it that's pretty obvious and if it happens in the face it's something someone
else can observe because we'll have something called facial drooping the face just hangs on
one side or if we smile it's an uneven smile it's basically just happening on one side but
a weakness can also happen in smaller less obvious muscles and again I want to emphasize that all of
these things are sudden and it could be if you had difficulty swallowing or chewing all of a sudden
then that could be a stroke if you had loss of fine motor skills such as writing or buttoning
clothing or things like that and it could also show up as difficulty speaking or slurred speech
and of course loss of muscle and motor function could affect balance and coordination and this is
not just your average poor balance but something that just comes on very suddenly and number five
is cognitive changes so now if for example we no longer understand language whether it's spoken or
written that has not so much with motor function but there's another portion of the brain that has
been affected other cognitive changes could have to do with people being confused it could be that
their memory suffers or they can't recall things anymore if they no longer can solve problems or
make decisions could also be a sign of a stroke but a stroke could absolutely affect any of the
five senses so very often we hear that blurred or double vision is a sign of stroke or if we have
numbness or tingling in any part of the body especially face or hands or legs is typically
where we're going to notice them that could be a stroke but we don't typically hear about changes
in the other senses and the reason is that it's not so obvious for example if we get a change in
hearing than due to a stroke then there's probably going to be other things going on that are much
more overpowering same thing with touch or taste or smell we probably will have some change in
these but it's going to be relatively small in comparison to all the the other things going
on but what does it mean to catch these signs early well there aren't really any early signs
of a stroke but here's what we need to understand that the transient ischemic attack the mini stroke
or the warning stroke and the real thing have the same signs because it's the same mechanisms
however they differ in severity and they differ in duration so the transient ischemic attack once it
comes that really is the early warning even though it's pretty far gone even at this point that is
the early warning and if we want to catch it even earlier then we're not going to go by signs but
now instead we need to really understand the risk factors and to develop a healthy lifestyle so
here are some of the lifestyle risk factors that predispose you to a stroke one would be a prime
clear history of a transient ischemic attack or a stroke if you've already had one then the risk is
definitely up second if you have a blood disorder like sickle cell anemia if your blood cells are
abnormal they'll have a greater tendency to clot and create clumps that can get stuck so that's not
a great thing number three would be autoimmune diseases like SLE systemic lupus erythematosus
often known as just lupus or rheumatoid arthritis so with these you have a lot more inflammation
typically which also would predispose you to a stroke but I'd like to talk about lifestyle risk
factors meaning things that you can do something about so if you've had a prior stroke then you've
already had it you can't undo it so yes you want to make some changes but you can't really do
anything about these so they're not really truly lifestyle risk factors same thing with a blood
disorder you have it or you don't it's genetic you can modify your lifestyle to a certain degree but
it's not strictly a risk factor same thing with autoimmunity you can develop a lifestyle to reduce
the effects but the autoimmune condition is never completely going to go away you you can improve it
to where it doesn't really change your quality of life but the rest of these factors I want to talk
about are truly lifestyle there's something that you can do something about so number four is high
blood pressure that is a risk factor and I I saw several lists by the way where they called high
blood pressure a sign of a stroke which obviously it isn't it's a risk factor that predisposes you
because high blood pressure puts additional stress on the blood vessels and it can cause ruptures and
problems and there's some obvious risk factors that I hope everyone knows about is smoking and
tobacco use and also excessive alcohol use so these are just common sense Lifestyle Changes
having a sedentary lifestyle sitting around exercise is not optional your body is designed to
move it needs to move and movement and exercise Drive pretty much all physiological processes
in the body so sedentary lifestyle is a risk factor but also medications like birth control
and hormone replacement therapy in particular will increase the risk of Strokes number nine
is stress because stress affects everything it puts your body in a fight flight mode and just
changes all the priorities of healing and 10 is insulin resistance type 2 diabetes and all the
factors related all the conditions related to metabolic syndrome so here we're talking about
cardiovascular disease high blood pressure poor circulation chronic kidney disease peripheral
artery disease and all of these problems all of these conditions are often listed as independent
risk factors but I don't like to do that because they're not independent they're directly resulting
from insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes and metabolic syndrome which we can do something
about so by following a lifestyle and a lot of the advice we promote on this channel you can
handle the high blood pressure you can handle the insulin resistance obviously you can stop smoking
and drinking too much you can start exercising and then you can develop a lifestyle where you
minimize or get rid of most of the medication a lot of people can stop their medication over time
if they just heal the body and restore the body to the point where medication isn't necessary so
don't just jump straight off and say these are bad things but realize they're just making up they're
just covering symptoms that result from something that isn't working and if you make it work again
then for the most part you're not going to need those medications and then we can truly understand
what stress is and I've done several videos on it and if we start handling the root causes
then we can minimize the effects of stress on our bodies and our health so if you're fairly healthy
healthy then these are the things that you need to maintain to stay that way if you are diabetic or
insulin resistant then you need to do these things to reverse it and if you had a transient ischemic
attack then you start these like yesterday and you get really serious about it to minimize the risk
of having a stroke as a follow-up event now a big part of the problem is that up to 88 percent of
the population is to some degree insulin resistant or have some metabolic problem but based on the
standard blood work and standard ranges They Don't Really catch it so I've created a blood work
course and you could get some blood work to figure out exactly where you are and to really understand
a lot of this stuff much better so if you'd like to learn more I'll put some information down
below and some other symptoms of a Tia or stroke could be nausea and vomiting it could be severe
fatigue especially sudden severe fatigue like overwhelmingly tired all of a sudden or a severe
headache and again not your average thing that just comes creeping up but something that's like
someone stabs you in the head with an ice pick severe sudden pain or it could be some personality
changes and this is probably not something you're going to pick up on yourself but something You
observe in someone else like something different about their behavior if you know how they usually
act and now it's just completely different something about their mood changes or something
else about their emotional state if you enjoyed this video You're Gonna Love that one and if you
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