 Many thanks for being with us on the breakfast this morning. It's time for us to look at our second conversation and this morning we're talking about stroke. Well tomorrow will be World Stroke Day but it's the eve of World Stroke Day and let's talk about it. World Stroke is observed to underscore the serious nature and high rates of stroke, increasing awareness of the prevention and treatment of the condition. The annual event was started in 2006 by the World Stroke Organization and it also declared stroke a public health emergency in 2010. The WSO now has an ongoing campaign that serves an annual round interference for advocacy policy outreach to support tribes and continue to progress, make progress on the World Day talking about stroke now. Trauma Ezefer who's a physiotherapist and health advocate, she joins the conversation, she's also the director of Expat Physiotherapy Services right here. Nigeria, thank you Trauma for joining us. Hello, it's a pleasure to be here. All right then let's get straight to it. What exactly is stroke? This is something that we hear every ordered time but can you quickly tell us what stroke is? In clean terms, stroke is a serious health condition where that is caused by a reduced reduction or an impediment to the blood supply of the part of the brain. Now usually when that happens it means the brain cells in that area begin to die off and this means that the areas of the body where those parts of the brain control are going to lose their function. I would also like to like you know usually like here in Africa we define stroke as when someone is weak on one side of the body. That is hemiparesis or hemiplegia and it's different from stroke because that is just one of the many possible things of stroke. Okay, so what are the causes of stroke and also the risk factors? There are so many things out there some of them are information that you know it's just not officially just a belief widely held belief that we've come so what are the causes of stroke and also tell us about the risk factors? Number one, stroke is not a poison that they match. Let me start with that so you like this abuse of mind. Typically in medical classification there are two main causes let's put it that way two main types of stroke rather and there is the ischemic type that is caused where the blood supply to that part of the brain is reduced due to a blockage it may be due to um um plagues forming in the arteries that supply the brain so you can imagine your water pipe if you have stones lots of stones that just combine in one area it's going to block the water supply to where to your garden so imagine it in that term and then you have the the hemorrhagic type of stroke this is caused when a blood vessel bursts when it bursts the blood vessels so the water pipe supplying your garden just bursts so it means the water is not even going to get to where it's going to. Typically hemorrhagic strokes most of the times are caused by um in high blood pressure in people with high blood pressure and um I would say that one of the most common causes for stroke is poorly managed or managed high blood pressure now there are lots of risk factors that can predispose you to it um obesity is one of it smoking is one of it and very importantly heredity a family history of it I would like to explain this in if you inherited a leg just like your father's you inherited your mother's nose so there's every likelihood you inherited your internal organs and environment just like your father's so you're more prone you're also likely to be prone to those um conditions or those diseases that he is prone to so typically we always advise if there's a family history of um high blood pressure and um like diabetes high blood pressure these are the two most common metabolic disorders among blacks anyway you have to like always get yourself checked and if it's if your high if your blood pressure is high for example you go to your doctor and get it managed it's so simple to manage it it's not like rocket science like our people make it to be and it's not a bad thing you can live a very quality life and excellent quality life as long as it's managed so um other risk factors would also um in some cases um some traumatic events could give you stroke like symptoms like someone that suffered a blow to the head and it could affect the blood supply to that part of the to the part of the brain and then you have symptoms showing enough um I also want to there is stroke has a younger brother I usually like to call it a younger brother it's called transcend its chemical attack now this is where you have symptoms of stroke that occur but does not last beyond 24 hours so yes this person looks like he had a stroke all the typical yeah the fast acronym everybody talks about all face drooping arm weakness um slurred speech or impaired speech occur and suddenly it disappears within 24 hours that's what you call it's transient it's chemical attack it strokes younger brother but I usually like to warn people that it is like john debaptist before the coming of jesus christ you know it comes to for one you are the incoming bigger brother and so if that's happening alone already tells you like you're quite quite more prone to a stroke than someone that has not even had a tia yeah please go sorry okay okay um other risk factors could also include people that have arrhythmia high cholesterol um I've talked about high blood pressure I also mentioned diabetes so these are common risk factors so among those blacks diabetes hypertension um hyperlipidemia or high cholesterol levels um can produce an arrhythmia arrhythmia just mean irregular heartbeat um you might be able to figure out a irregular heartbeat it could in what way are the other effects circulation and thereby you know from the description I gave blood supply to part of the brain being cut off so you might be able to figure out how that goes so these are the um more commonly known risk factor all right all right and shock interesting interesting um it's a lot it's a lot to to chew on I heard you say so that the tia you talked about um uh you said it's it's it can go on notice is that what you say or does it come accompanied with any stiffness or slurred speech impairment that's true yeah cognitive ability in speech and movement and all that now there are main symptoms at least I'm sure by now everyone is familiar with the fast acronym FASC F standing for facial weakness one part of the face being weak um A standing for arm weakness and in other cases weakness of any of the limbs with the leg arm S for slurred speech or impeded speech and then C just means it's time to make a call that's an emergency call so these are the main symptoms but I would like to um put it let people know that there are times the stroke has occurred I personally had a patient and it's confirmed I had a stroke but physically we're not like much physically physically observable symptoms but it affected his speech so sometimes if you are there waiting to see if the arm will droop or the face will droop you know you just might be stuck but these are the common symptoms that everyone can work with so but let's talk let's have for the conversation do you think there's any connection with hypertension and stroke because uh you know sometimes no there's there's always horrors very very much and like I said hypertension is one of the major metabolic disorders that we Africans suffer from and so it looks like it's quite uh more common with Africa in fact Nigeria has a quite um high prevalence um okay of stroke but back to hypertension yes hypertension is a major major major risk factor like I had mentioned because um due to the high blood pressure and one of the arteries supplying the brain which I must also add are quite slimmer that the arteries supplying the brain are quite usually slimmer than that supplying other body parts and they're more prone to of course since they're more slimmer they're more delicate so they can easily burst so especially in the hemorrhagic type of stroke it is a major major factor yeah so hypertension is oh it's one of the major things up there in fact I would say that a great percentage of cases of stroke patients I've had have mostly been hypertensive individuals all right like like they say Chioma is prevention is better than cure what what do we need to do what lifestyle choices do we need to make in order to to at least to prevent such from happening because from what I hear you you medical practitioners say the age of this stroke thing is not no longer you know for the old people even seeing children having stroke someone told me they're even babies are having stroke I don't know if that's true so what do we need to do uh what lifestyle choices do we need to make health choices to to make sure we protect ourselves because I don't want to have a stroke uh no you won't have you know me if you have I would um even maybe get you beautiful having a stroke you shouldn't you know doctors so um one of your first things you want to do is to manage your risk now we mentioned the risk factors I would like to keep it simple manage your risk if you know you have a family history of these risk factors atherosclerosis high blood pressure diabetes hyperlipidemia you know you get to manage them and you're not managing them by drinking sand and some concoctions you see your professional if you're diabetic you want to see of course all of them you're supposed to see your doctor if you're diabetic for example you want to see your endocrinologist if you're hypertensive you want to your neurologist you have you should see your doctor who would prescribe the right medications for you now what these medications do like in the instance of high blood pressure is to help to regulate your blood pressure and I must also add how to protect your kidneys because this most of these conditions also get affected kidneys but that's by the way not related now you want to manage your stroke if you are obese you want to lose weight as much as possible and as you can you want to see your dietician who prescribe the proper meals for you you want to see your physiotherapies who is going to prescribe the right kind of exercises for you you want to you want to live healthier you want to sleep better you just basically your main prevention is managing your risk all right thank you as the risk factor changes thank you so much choma is ife for being with us this morning and helping us understand what stroke is and how we can prevent it and what actually costs it we really appreciate your thoughts this morning on the issue you're welcome choma is ife is a physiotherapist and health advocates she's also director expat physiotherapy services right here in Nigeria it's a big issue you know for africans and i lost my grandmother to stroke all right i lost two parents to stroke you know so when i took care of my father you know particularly because he lived with me for in his last days and i saw everything almost everything about this disease i think the the bottom line she said is live right like for me um i've made a health choice i don't take fizzy drinks again so all of you drink all these carbonated drinks i wish you well just so that um i can i can be healthy you know and i'm taking i'm taking more fibers in my your system yes yes in my in my meals i that's a very i don't i don't eat noodles again i don't eat spaghetti again i'm praying to god for the grace to stop eating rice and i think i've stopped eating ever you know so let's see how it goes great wonder great choice right there and that's what it's about we hope that we continue to stay healthy and you know continue to stay alive stop drinking carbonated drinks as well well you can't tell everyone that because people will still always drink carbonated drinks drink a lot of water welcome we need to move now that's the size of a conversation this morning on the breakfast it's been an exciting friday morning we will return on monday or things being equal thank you so much for being with us we appreciate you so much and if you're just joining it's fine to follow us on facebook twitter and instagram to be part of the conversation we've had uh word plus tv africa and plus tv africa lifestyle my name is messia we'll join the newsroom at nine o'clock for the news brief please stay with us and my name is kofi bartels i'll go i'll still try to convince missy to let go of her her minerals and soft drinks see you on monday good morning