中风可严重影响病友本人和他或她家人的生活品质，那么如何才能够有效地预防中风呢？中风杂志（Stroke）日前建议大家，为了有效地预防中风的发生，宜关注以下7个方面的问题：

1、经常进行体育锻炼；

2、降低胆固醇；

3、合理膳食；

4、调控血压；

5、维持一个健康的体重；

6、避免高血糖；

7、不吸烟或避免吸“二手烟”和“三手烟”。

Your Stroke Risk Can Shrink With 7 Lifestyle Changes

Controlling blood pressure is most important, large U.S. study found

THURSDAY, June 6 (HealthDay News) -- Certain lifestyle changes could greatly reduce your stroke risk, according to a new study.

Researchers calculated stroke risk among nearly 23,000 black and white Americans aged 45 and older. Their risk was assessed using the American Heart Association's Life's Simple 7 health factors: be active, control cholesterol, eat a healthy diet, manage blood pressure, maintain a healthy weight, control blood sugar and don't smoke.

During five years of follow-up, 432 strokes occurred among the participants. All seven factors played an important role in predicting stroke risk, but blood pressure was the most important, according to the study, which was published June 6 in the journal Stroke.

"Compared to those with poor blood pressure status, those who were ideal had a 60 percent lower risk of future stroke," study senior author Dr. Mary Cushman, a professor of medicine at the University of Vermont in Burlington, said in a journal news release.

Cushman and her colleagues also found that people who didn't smoke or quit smoking more than a year before the start of the study had a 40 percent lower stroke risk.

For the study, the researchers categorized the participants' Life's Simple 7 scores as inadequate (zero to four points), average (five to nine points) or optimum (10 to 14 points). Every one-point increase was associated with an 8 percent lower stroke risk. People with optimum scores had a 48 percent lower risk than those with inadequate scores, and those with average scores had a 27 percent lower risk.

Overall, blacks had lower scores than whites, but the association between scores and stroke risk was similar for blacks and whites.

"This highlights the critical importance of improving these health factors since blacks have nearly twice the stroke mortality rates as whites," Cushman said.

Each year, about 795,000 people in the United States have a stroke, which is the No. 4 killer and a leading cause of long-term disability in the country, according to the American Heart Association.

SOURCE: Stroke, news release, June 6, 2013