Exercise and stroke prevention

Prevent a stroke - and you can save your life.

For the next few weeks, I want to focus on news and ideas on stroke prevention. Here's one that we can all take advantage of - a WebMD story on how moderate exercise may cut risk of "silent" stroke

People who reported engaging in moderate to intense exercise were 40% less likely to have the lesions than people who did not exercise at all, even after the researchers took into account other stroke risk factors such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol.

Regular light exercise, such as golf, walking, bowling, or dancing did not appear to decrease the risk for silent stroke, but study researcher and stroke specialist Joshua Willey, MD, says these activities clearly benefit health.

Willey is an assistant professor of neurology at Columbia University.

"I would not want these findings to discourage people from walking or performing other light exercise," he tells WebMD. "But it may be that a certain level of exercise frequency and intensity is needed to lower silent stroke risk."