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The risk of stroke is heightened in the early hours of the morning with dangerous implications for your health, according to medical experts.
This is due to changes in our blood, Dr. Trisha Pasricha, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, wrote Monday in The Washington Post.
There’s a spike in blood pressure as we wake up. The increased force of blood against arteries in the brain can raise the chance of clots or vessels bursts, the two main causes of a stroke.
“But in terms of strokes, the issue is not simply blood pressure. It turns out your blood itself changes in the morning too,” said Pasricha.
Up to half of severe strokes happen in the morning, according to a 2002 Wayne State University study. People are 72 percent more likely to suffer a stroke between 6-9 a.m., a Rush University analysis of nearly 12,000 stroke patients found in 1998.
The blood becomes stickier in the morning, also raising the chance of clots. That’s because platelets - small, colorless cell fragments in the blood that help form clots to stop bleeding - are more likely to clump together in the morning.
The clumping is tied to the body’s sleep-wake cycle, which spikes levels of hormones that boost platelet production in the mornings.
"And our intrinsic mechanisms that dissolve clots in the body are less effective in the early morning hours," Dr. Gregory Albers, a professor of neurosurgery and the director of the Stanford Stroke Center, told The Huffington Post in July.
These same factors raise our risk for a deadly heart attack in the morning, researchers at Queen Mary University of London say.
A growing problem in young adults
The majority of Americans who suffer a stroke are over the age of 65 but rates have been on the rise in younger Americans in recent decades.
Stroke rates in adults, aged 20-54, living in the Midwest nearly doubled from 1993 to 2020, a University of Cincinnati study published in September found.
“What we found is that young adults experiencing strokes increasingly have high blood pressure, diabetes, high cholesterol, obesity and smoking histories,” Aaron Shoskes, a neurologist at University of Utah Health’s Clinical Neurosciences Center, said in April. “So, in many cases, this isn’t coming out of nowhere.”
There are 795,000 strokes each year in the U.S. and close to 140,000 stroke deaths, according to the American Brain Foundation. A person has a stroke every 40 seconds in the U.S.
Signs of stroke to know include a change in vision, a change in balance, arm weakness, face drooping and trouble speaking. The faster a stroke is treated, the more likely the chance of recovery, the American Heart Association says.
Reduced risk in 10 minutes
To reduce stroke risk, focus on addressing commonly-recognized contributors to strokes, such as inactivity and poor diet, doctors say. To keep blood pressure levels low, people should aim for 10-30 minutes of exercise each day, like walking, running, cycling or dancing.
“You don’t need to fit it all into one perfect 30-minute block,” Dr. Mehak Gandhi, a primary care provider with Connecticut's Hartford HealthCare Medical Group, said in an August statement.
Experts also recommend that people eat heart-healthy foods, like those recommended in the Mediterranean diet, including dark leafy greens and olive oil.
“These lifestyle changes may not sound exciting, but they are some of the most powerful ways to lower stroke risk,” Aaron Shoskes, a neurologist at University of Utah Health’s Clinical Neurosciences Center, said in April.