Guest fountainhall Posted May 7, 2011 Posted May 7, 2011 Using a title which is partly misleading and definitely incomplete - Sex and coffee 'trigger stroke' - the BBC’s website today highlights yet another research study claiming new evidence of factors which increase our likelihood of having a stroke. In essence, if you are a coffee drinking, nose blowing, sex-loving, vigorous exerciser who strains when defecating, drinks cola, gets easily startled and is angry from time to time, sorry guys – this research says you are more at risk of a stroke! Which surely is pretty obvious, in my book! Isn't any activity which increases blood pressure for even a short burst of time likely to increase such risk? And isn’t life really about balancing the positive and negative effects of our actions than paying too much attention to one? I’m certainly not going to give up sex. Nor am I going to give up my one cup of coffee a day. In any case, how on earth do you place credibility in a research programme that involved just 250 people over 3 years? Coffee, sex and blowing your nose could increase the risk of a type of stroke, say researchers in the Netherlands. The study on 250 patients identified eight risk factors linked to bleeding on the brain. They all increase blood pressure which could result in blood vessels bursting, according to research published in the journal Stroke . . . Percentage of bursts due to: Coffee 10.6% Vigorous exercise 7.9% Nose blowing 5.4% Sex 4.3% Straining to defecate 3.6% Drinking cola 3.5% Being startled 2.7% Being angry 1.3% http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13294022 Quote
