*Vessel Health Series by Name*

1. Professor Kim Dong-ik of vascular surgery at Samsung Medical Center, the key to vascular management is 'first treatment'

2. Kim Mi-hyun, a professor of circulatory medicine at Ilsan Cha Hospital, "vascular red light"

for postmenopausal women

3. Chung Geun-hwa, a professor of neurology at Seoul National University Hospital, signals indicating 'stroke'

4. Choi Yoon-seok, a professor of circulatory medicine at Yeouido St. Mary's Hospital, "stroke"

regardless of age

5. Han Dong-ha, director of Han Dong-ha Oriental Medicine Clinic, How to Get Out of 'Fat Vascular Syndrome'

Professor Jeong Geun-hwa of

According to the

Korean Stroke Society, the incidence rate is still high enough that one in 60 adults in Korea is a stroke patient. What is the underlying cause of stroke?

We can divide it into genetic, environmental, and lifestyle parts, but genetics and environmental factors are things we can't control, so we need to focus on the self-regulating lifestyle parts. Stroke is not a disease that suddenly breaks blood vessels or destroys the brain one day. It is a disease caused by the accumulation of unhealthy lifestyle habits for a very long time, putting pressure on blood vessels.

The

brain has a defense system that can cope with narrowing and clogging of blood vessels, so if blood flow from one side is insufficient, blood can be drawn from the other side. When this defense system collapses, you get sick, and it takes a lot of time before it collapses. In the end, unhealthy lifestyle habits accumulated for a long time are the cause of stroke.

#51 What are some unhealthy lifestyle habits?

There are classic risk factors that are commonly known. High blood pressure, diabetes, hyperlipidemia, smoking, obesity, and lack of exercise are some of the things that have been clearly proven causality through various studies with wrong lifestyle habits and the resulting risk factors. In most cases, you can prevent it if you adjust it in advance, so it is important to continuously check your lifestyle.

Is there a way to self-diagnose the condition of your blood vessels as a

check?

Unlike other organs,

cerebrovascular conditions are trapped inside a hard bone called the skull, so there is no way to check the vascular conditions directly from the outside. Instead, there are indirect indicators. It’s blood pressure. The difference between systolic and diastolic blood pressure is called “pulse pressure,” and it is judged that blood vessel function decreased when the difference in pulse pressure increased.

#59 Also, high blood pressure fluctuations suggest that there is a problem with blood vessel health. If you don’t have a blood pressure measuring tool, you can check your pulse. If your heart rate is irregular, you may have problems with your heart’s function, which increases your risk of stroke. However, to prevent stroke, systematic tests, including brain nutrition tests, are required to accurately check the condition of your cerebrovascular system.

stroke is characterized by sudden onset of symptoms, is there a way to confirm that you have a stroke?  

How to identify

stroke symptoms is very important. If a stroke is not treated early, there is no way to recover the brain, so you should visit the emergency room quickly and receive treatment to reopen the blocked part of the blood vessel.

The most common symptom is partial paralysis. When the right brain is damaged, the left hemiplegia appears. In the case of mild paralysis, only the face may look asymmetric. In addition, language disorders appear, and if blood flow is not supplied to the brain area in charge of language, it loses the ability to understand or express words and pronunciation is impaired. And you can also have visual impairment. Sudden interruption of blood flow to special areas of the brain results in sudden blackness of the right or left field of vision. 

Should I go to the hospital even if the

danger signal briefly appears and disappears?

Symptoms such as

facial paralysis, speech impairment, vision impairment, and pronunciation impairment may briefly appear and disappear, or may worsen over several hours. The former case is called a transient ischemic attack. It’s also called a mini stroke.

When a

transient ischemic attack appears, I often think it’s nothing because of the nature of my condition getting better again, so I just move on. However, in this case, there is a 50% chance of stroke, so it is necessary to approach treatment with the same risk as stroke. 

Is it possible to treat cerebrovascular diseases such as stroke with perfect recovery to their previous state?

Most of the

can be restored to normal. According to the results of previous studies, 40% of patients can return to normal condition if they come to the hospital quickly and undergo vascular reopening surgery. In addition, 30% can partially recover and bring about improvement, and the remaining 30% shows no change or deterioration. In the end, about 70% of all patients can recover to their previous condition, so it is important to go to the hospital as soon as possible if symptoms appear.

It’s a relief if you fully recover after

treatment, but I’ve heard that it leaves a lot of aftereffects.

If the

response is delayed and the brain is eventually damaged, it is difficult to return to 100% normal condition. This is because the brain is not an organ that regenerates unlike other organs. Therefore, aftereffects occur, and most of the early symptoms of stroke remain without recovering. Face paralysis continues to appear or language impairment makes it difficult to communicate.

What's important is that a stroke is not a disease that disappears once the lights are out. Stroke can recur at any time because the embers remain. Therefore, you should not think that you are cured just because you have a stroke and have improved to some extent, and you should consider ways such as drug control, procedures, and surgical treatment that can find and eliminate the cause.

Many people take a variety of health foods for vascular health. Is there anything I should be careful about in this case?

There are studies showing that health foods such as omega-3 and krill oil, which are good for blood vessel health, can be effective to some extent. But what you have to remember is health supplements. It is recommended if you take it as a precautionary measure without any symptoms yet, but when you are diagnosed with the disease and it is determined that treatment is necessary, you must use the appropriate drug.

In general, health supplements are very less effective than drugs. Typically, there is a drug called "statin," which has been proven to be more effective in reducing cholesterol and preventing stroke than omega-3. Regarding stroke prevention, it is much more effective to take a tablet of statin than to eat a large amount of omega-3 or krill oil.

What kind of care do you do for blood vessel health?

I have a blood pressure meter, a blood glucose meter, and I monitor my blood vessel health periodically. Also, weight control is the main indicator of blood vessel health, so I often use the scale. To control your weight, you have to control the amount you go into your body or the amount you go out.

Eventually, monitoring weight changes can determine the appropriateness of eating habits and exercise. Of course, not only weight but also body composition is important, but when you exercise along with diet control, you pay relatively less attention to the body composition itself because it goes in a good direction. Considering the convenience of measurement, I think it is good to use weight as an indicator to control diet and exercise at the same time.