Every year, more than 795,000 people in the US have a stroke and about 610,000 of these are first-time events, according to the CDC. The majority of these are women, who have a lifetime risk of 1 in 5 of ever having a stroke. Strokes kill twice as many women as breast cancer. Yet there is a simple way to lower your risk, according to a new study out of Harvard, by shifting away from animal products to a plant-centric diet.
The latest study comes from researchers from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was published in the journal
Neurology. Titled “Quality of Plant-based Diet and Risk of Total, Ischemic, and Hemorrhagic Stroke,” the research revealed that a healthy, plant-based diet, focused on vegetables, leafy greens, whole grains, and beans, and containing lower levels of animal product and processed foods, as well as added sugars was linked with a lower risk of stroke.