According to a new study, people with higher levels of iron are at a greater risk of having a stroke.<\/p>\n
Iron and strokes<\/strong><\/p>\n The researchers at Imperial College London found that people with \u201cgenetically determined higher\u201d iron levels were at a greater risk of strokes that result from a blood clot or other obstacle traveling from the heart.<\/p>\n More specifically, the scientists identified single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the DNA of people that tend to raise or reduce iron levels. Once the compared the SNPs to another genetic dataset of people who had experienced strokes, they found that the SNPs that raise iron levels were associated with the people most likely to have cardioembolic strokes.<\/p>\n The authors of the study warn that people shouldn\u2019t use this information to try to alter their iron levels, however. More research is needed to confirm the results and find out why iron has this effect.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is an early-stage finding,\u201d says the School of Public Health at Imperial College London\u2019s Dr. Dipender Gill, the lead author of the study, \u201cand we would certainly not recommend that patients at risk of stroke reduce their iron intake, as it has many crucial roles in the body.\u201d<\/p>\n Iron, for example, carries oxygen in red blood cells.<\/p>\n Cardioembolic stroke around the world<\/strong><\/p>\n The World Health Organization estimates that annually, 15 million people have a stroke. Of that 15 million, one-third die and another one-third become disabled for the rest of their lives.<\/p>\n Of the 795,000 strokes that occur annually in the United States, about 140,000 lead to death.<\/p>\n Most strokes are of the ischemic type. This type of stroke is caused by a blockage in the blood vessels that stops oxygen-rich and nutrient-rich blood from reaching the affected part of the brain.<\/p>\n Cardioembolic strokes make up a large portion of ischemic strokes. They\u2019re also linked to atrial fibrillation, which is when the heart beats faster than normal or irregularly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to a new study, people with higher levels of iron are at a greater risk of having a stroke. Iron and strokes The researchers at Imperial College London found that people with \u201cgenetically determined higher\u201d iron levels were at a greater risk of strokes that result from a blood clot or other obstacle traveling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12943,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[851,862,827,863,750,719],"class_list":["post-12898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-blood-vessels","tag-brain-health","tag-heart-health","tag-iron","tag-stroke","tag-wellness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12898","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}