Non-Modifiable Risk Factors

The non modifiable risk factors are sort of worth, at least recognizing and my sort of view on the non-modifiable risk factors are okay, fine, these are things you have no control over, but it’s worth it to recognize because it’s that much more important to really strangle the modifiable risk factors as best you can. Address them with as much aggression as you can. And so, non modifiable risk factors. So sex. So men have overall, on an age adjusted basis have more strokes than women, but over a lifetime women have more strokes than men. And with women the strokes are actually more lethal or more dangerous when they occur. Age. Stroke is a disease that is much more common as we get older. So recognizing that is an important thing and again, maintaining these risk factors as we age is very important. Next is genetics. If there’s a strong family history of heart disease and stroke, that’s very important to pay attention to. And last is race. And so we know that ethnically wise African Americans have a higher rate of stroke than Caucasians and Mexican-Americans are probably somewhere in between. So again, those are things worth paying attention to. We think that in African Americans, the higher rate of stroke has a lot to do with a higher incidence of high blood pressure. And treating that aggressively is very crucial in that specific population.