Diet and health go hand-in-hand. A good diet leads to betterment of health and vice-versa. Adding on to this thought, a new study stated that higher intake of fruits, veggies and dairy products decrease the risk of ischaemic stroke. For the unversed, it is one of the most common types of stroke, which is caused by blood clot, blocking a blood vessel in brain; another cause is stenosis (narrowing of the artery). The study was published in the European Heart Journal.
The study, which investigated on more than 4,18,000 people from nine European countries over a period of time, found that increase in consumption of fruit, vegetables, fibre, milk, cheese or yogurt reduced the risk of ischaemic stroke. However, there was no such association with a lower risk of haemorrhagic stroke. Rather, it was found that higher intake of eggs increased the risk of haemorrhagic stroke. No foods were linked to a statistically significant higher risk of ischaemic stroke.
Haemorrhagic stroke occurs when there is bleeding in the brain that damages nearby cells. About 85 percent of strokes, which is the second leading cause of deaths worldwide, are ischaemic and 15 percent are haemorrhagic.
As per a report in IANS, Tammy Tong from University of Oxford in the UK, who is the first author of the study stated, "Our study also highlights the importance of examining stroke subtypes separately, as the dietary associations differ for ischaemic and haemorrhagic stroke, and is consistent with other evidence, which shows that other risk factors such as cholesterol levels or obesity also influence the two stroke subtypes differently."