Your risk of having a stroke before age 50 shoots up if you have this common condition shared by 8M Americans

Rates of young people suffering from strokes have been on the rise, with a CDC report last year finding a 14.6% increase in people aged 18-44 and a 15.7% increase from ages 45-64.Even more troubling is that in many cases, these people lack traditional risk factors.“Up to half of all ischemic strokes in younger adults are of unknown causes, and they are more common in women,” said Dr.Jukka Putaala, head of the stroke unit at Helsinki University Hospital in Finland and lead author of the study.A new study aimed to figure out which risk factors have the biggest impact — and found a surprising link to a fairly common condition.The team looked at 12 traditional risk factors (including ones like diabetes, smoking and obesity) and 10 nontraditional factors — which include autoimmune disease, IBS, chronic kidney disease, and having migraines with aura.

They found that each nontraditional risk factor a patient had increased their stroke risk by a whopping 70%.It’s even worse for people who also have a common heart defect called patent foramen ovale (PFO), which affects 1 in 4 people.For them, those nontraditional risk factors more than double their stroke risk.And among all those nontraditional risk factors, the researchers found migraines with aura to be the worst.“We were aware of the important role of migraine with aura in this patient population based on earlier knowledge but were surprised that it was so profound, especially when its prevalence and strength of association were put in perspective with traditional stroke risk factors,” lead investigator Dr.

Jukka Putaala told Medscape Medical News.About 39 million Americans suffer from migraines, and 20% experience an aura, in which intense headaches are accompanied by sensory issues like flashing lights and blind spots.That means roughly 8 million people in the US could be at an increased risk of stroke due to this condition.And migraines in general are more common in women, who account for more than thre...