More Millennials Are Having Strokes

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/more-millennials-are-having-strokes/

by indogooner • 9 years ago

200 182 9 years ago

scientificamerican.com

rootw0rm• 9 years ago

my wife had a stroke at age 30. 4 strokes actually, 2 bleeds and 2 clots. accidental overdose on stims.

Havoc3• 9 years ago

What do you mean by stims? Like adderall?

kdamken• 9 years ago

I'm sorry to hear that. What were the stims that caused that?

shams93• 9 years ago

Sleep deprivation is known to cause strokes, take a look at how many millennials are expected to put in 80-100 hours for a 40 hour check , extreme high competition overtime just to hold onto their seat.

sotojuan• 9 years ago

OK, ready to get out of my bubble. How true is this? The only people I know that work more than 40 hours a week still work less than 60. This is in "office", food, and service jobs.

paulddraper3• 9 years ago

I know people that would work 80 hour weeks. They were engineers in the gaming industry and a couple crunch weeks were not uncommon.

But that's a really specific situation for a short period of time.

alsetmusic• 9 years ago

I worked in an environment where people around me were putting in upwards of 80 hrs. I was closer to 60 hrs because I had 2+ hrs of commute time each day. Still, I had to put in time at home during crunches. We probably had about five months of 40 hr weeks spread throughout the year between launches, yet many people still went well over even then.

It's not universal, but I don't think it's uncommon.

Havoc3• 9 years ago

Yeah I routinely exceed 60 during peak season. 80 if I'm working weekends too. And that's focused work with lots of context shifts. So yeah after peak season I'm on the edge of burn-out.

I'd imagine I'm not doing myself any favours there health wise.

Symmetry• 9 years ago

I know a lot of grad students who had lives like that.

legulere3• 9 years ago

It's not that uncommon to work 12 hours per day 7 days a week in touristic places.

guessbest• 9 years ago

That, combined with MDMA or Adderall, is more likely to lead to epilepsy. Strokes have a stronger connection to diet and weight.

nnfy• 9 years ago

Drugs in the amphetamine class do not cause epilepsy as far as I know. I would be very interested in a source, if you have one.

richardknop• 9 years ago

Any data to back this up? I'm a millennial and know plenty other millennials and they usually put 35-40h per week as is standard in Europe.

dorgo• 9 years ago

20h for me in germany :-P

VLM• 9 years ago

There are several numeracy issues with the story.

The first is strokes are incredibly rare. Going from 5-ish to 10-ish per 10K hospitalizations. "When I was that age" I was never hospitalized once, so you need to factor in how many times that group is hospitalized. I would theorize its extremely rare leading to perhaps better diagnosis or something rather than actual medical effects. Also its worth contemplating that "when I was that age" a kid who stroked out on coke was considered a coke related death not a stroke related death. A classic example when I was that age was the story of "Len Bias" a basketball player who celebrated being drafted by the Celtics by snorting coke until he died. There was quite a circular firing squad of blame but attitudes in that era were unified that coke killed, not strokes, despite the medical definition and all that.

The next numeracy issue is there's about 84 million in the group and unlike previous generations its not white majority and there are considerable differences in race and ancestry and socioeconomic group. Basically that group can't be usefully compared to historical groups because its literally a different people. You wouldn't compare Bolivia with Nigeria and claim the comparison means anything when there's no relationship between the separate and unrelated groups of people. Its entirely possible that (now older) middle class professional Scotts-Irish have a different stroke profile than formerly Mexican peasant villagers. Apples to Oranges means nothing. That group is a different nation merely coincidentally happening to inhabit the same plot of land. Like comparing the medical issues of the pre-Crusades residents of Jerusalem to Crusades ere residents. Or pre- and post- Holocaust ghettos in eastern europe. Its a different people, the comparison means nothing.

The next numeracy issue is there's 84M in the group, as of May 15 2015 Time magazine (per google) claims only 53M are in the workforce. As of 2013 Gallup poll indicated only 43% of the group have a full time job, and 43% of 83M is 36M. So there's a lot of handwaving involved, but when only 36M out of 84M are working full time, overwork is probably not statistically possible to double the instance of strokes. That would imply strokes are something like six times more likely among full time workers. Basically the socioeconomic group is extremely poor and disenfranchised and no percentage of ivy grad programmers dying at their desks at video game companies is numerically high enough to double the entire groups stroke rate. There are not enough SV programmers such that if they all died of strokes it would boost the numbers. Whats killing kids can't be work because the employment stats are so incredibly dire, permanent long term economic decline and all that.

dheera• 9 years ago

This. The whole culture of working overtime and weekends as a "norm" is horribly unhealthy. Weekends were invented for a reason, i.e. to not work. I spend most of my weekends biking, hiking, socializing, working on personal projects, and generally trying to be healthy, both physically and mentally.

I say this as a cardiac arrest survivor. I would be terrified to be stuck in an office for 7 days a week. It's just not right for the body or mind.

Herodotus384• 9 years ago

A couple potential causes:

Increasing incidence of morbid obesity, HTN, type II diabetes, which are risk factors for strokes.

Increased incidence of IV drug abuse, which sometimes leads to endocarditis, leading to septic emboli (I see this very often).

802112• 9 years ago

Yes. We need to stop subsidizing and normalizing obesity.

Herodotus384• 9 years ago

Honestly, I think the opioid epidemic is really what is driving this more. Unfortunately the article doesn't bring it up.

Though I do agree with you in general that we need a fundamental cultural change or we are going to see the average life expectancy.

Every morbidly obese child you see has s good chance of not living past 50-60, and their adulthood is going to be marked by early disability.

weinzierl2• 9 years ago

Iron deficiency anemia (IDA) has been associated with strokes in young people. IDA doesn't necessarily have pronounced symptoms and a diagnosis with a blood sample is simple and cheap. It is often considered a "female disorder" but it's only slightly more common in females than males.

tldr: Have your blood checked.

[1] https://www.hindawi.com/journals/crinm/2012/487080/

EDIT: As most follow up comments seem to center around diet as a cause, I wanted to point out that there are several other causes.

simonsarris2• 9 years ago

Various deficiencies are definitely a problem in my friend population, where many of them are vegans.

The vegan diet is a diet of deficiencies, and since none of them are particularly careful about what they eat, I worry that it is making them all worse off. Iron and B12 may be the most obvious, but also D3, calcium, zing, animal based nutrients like creatine, and I'm sure others.

Unfortunately, this becomes a touchy subject with them very quickly, and most of them believe "being vegan is healthier," but are uninterested in engaging with or supporting this claim.

danenania• 9 years ago

I'm not vegan, but the counterargument I've heard is that an unbalanced omnivore diet can also lead to deficiencies/nutrition problems, and that actually the average vegan diet is more balanced overall than the average omnivore diet, so it's unfair to single out vegans when eating a healthy and varied diet is a challenge for everyone.

In other words, you should probably be just as worried about your non-vegan friends who eat too much meat, not enough leafy greens, not enough vitamins, etc.

zosophorous• 9 years ago

Perhaps that is true for a vegan diet where you only eat standard American food, but a whole foods plant-based diet has been shown time after time to lower risks for all sorts of diseases, from heart disease to cancer to parkingsons and MS.

Iron and calcium are in plants, D is in fact added to milk, and can be added to a plant based diet via a pill as well if you don't synthesize enough. You are an animal; your body creates enough creatine (creatine production is in fact downregulated when you consume meat). B12 can also be added via a pill, and it is already added to many foods like cereal.

When you look deeper into the facts, you will see that the Standard American Diet faces far more deficiencies, the most obvious being fiber.

screye• 9 years ago

This is surprising to me, as in India a large part of the population is vegetarian. We don't seem to be susceptible to the same problems.

The move away from Milk products & Eggs seems to open a huge nutrient gap that the vegan population hasn't adequately identified how to fill.

alanbernstein• 9 years ago

Most, really? Have you spoken to "most" vegans?

gonyea• 9 years ago

I'm not sure Rural and Vegan intersect much. Doubtful this Is the source issue.

I'd wager a sedentary lifestyle and stimulants are a major culprit.

dgacmu• 9 years ago

The vegan diet is a diet of deficiencies, and since none of them are particularly careful about what they eat

First off, B12 is important, but most vegan milk-substitute things have 25% or 50% of the US RDA of B12 per serving. Not all - a lot of almond milk isn't supplemented with B12 (to which i grumble). They're often also iron-supplemented. Here, for example, is the nutrition label for Silk Organic Unsweetened Soy Milk:

https://silk.com/sites/default/files/products/nutrition/SK_2...

Note the vitamin D and calcium in there as well. The FDA is generally clever about the requirements they put on things -- the potential for such deficiencies is well-known, and so is addressed at a few places.

Creatine isn't a necessary nutrient - our kidneys and livers synthesize it.

Finally, I, at least get a lot of "zing" in my diet by being creative about what we cook. (Sorry, couldn't resist) Zinc, however, you should pay attention to, but eating a diversity of beans and nuts (and tofu) covers it quite well.

Seriously, though: It's not hard to have the bases covered. If you're really concerned and not just concern-trolling, sit down with your friends and a copy of Cron-o-Meter, which is one of the most comprehensive meal nutrition profilers around. It's what I used when figuring out the overall layout for our family's meals, and it did lead me to a few cheats -- like favoring molasses as a sweetener, throwing flaxseed in place of part of the flour in a bunch of recipes, etc., to make sure we were hitting all the targets. Useful software.

ChristianBundy4• 9 years ago

The vegan diet is a diet of deficiencies

This is, unfortunately for you, completely fabricated. I'd recommend at least checking Google Scholar before making silly claims on HN.

If you'd like to make a claim, cite your source. If you'd like to circlejerk the "vegan is bad, meat is good" fiction, downvote instead.

cylinder• 9 years ago

Don't forget Vitamin K2.

velox_io2• 9 years ago

The reason more females have it is because of blood loss from periods (Iron is needed to make up Red-blood cells).

I had IDA for over a year. My doctor tried to fix/ mask it with iron supplements, turns out was a coeliac. Which explains why I was constantly felt lethargic/ hung-over.

Pro tip: Don't trust everything your doctor says (new Dr suspected it and ordered tests straight away).

mistermann• 9 years ago

I will second this, many doctors are willfully ignorant and can't even conceive of the notion that a doctor is capable of being uninformed or wrong.

I've been having some unexplained medical issues lately and asked for some specialized blood tests and was refused (this being Canada, you go to the doctor with your hat in your hand, begging that they actually take your problems seriously, and if they don't want to help you, you're out of luck.)

danaliv• 9 years ago

blood loss from periods

...is a whopping 10-35 mL per period—hardly enough to cause a nutrient deficiency.

agumonkey• 9 years ago

tiny warning: if you take iron supplement, you'll shit black (or a very dark shade of gray). Do not panic.

mistersquid• 9 years ago

Same is true for Pepto Bismol.

Someone I knew took some extra strength Pepto Bismol to treat an upset stomach and diarrhea. Her stool ended up turning black, which I advised is a sign of intestinal bleeding.

She went to the emergency room and learned that bismuth, the active ingredient in Pepto Bismol, can temporarily turn stool black. [0]

[0] https://www.pepto-bismol.com/en-us/faq/black-stool-black-ton...

koolba• 9 years ago

What do you ask for to have your blood checked?

Would whatever tests they do as part of a routine blood tests in a physical include it or is it something separate you'd have to ask for?

just4themoney2• 9 years ago

First off, for the record, routine physicals/wellness exams are not evidence based.

That being said, theres nothing about routine physicals/wellness exams that are standard. Every doctor/clinician has a different idea of what a routine physical is and many (most?) ignore official guidelines. I've had routine physicals from many different doctors (I've moved a lot) and ever single one of them do something different. One didn't actually touch me other than blood pressure (which was done by a medical assistant) but ordered a ton of "routine" blood work and talked to me a real lot. One listened to my heart, lungs, looked at my eyes, nose, throat, and felt every single one of my organs (that she could) but didn't order any blood work at all. Some call to see me every year some don't call until a few years later. Then there's this nonsense - https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/32293/

So absolutely nobody knows what your doctor orders, you'll have to ask them. (Which you should do anyways).

Routine screening of individuals without symptoms or other indications can also harm, so caution is warranted: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/a-skeptical-look-at-screeni...

"I would like to be screened for anemia" is what you would say to your doctor.

dwich• 9 years ago

The key words would be to ask for an "iron panel". In most US states you can also order one yourself without a doctor's visit, but without much option of having insurance cover it.

weinzierl2• 9 years ago

Where I live there is a standard blood test, which consists of at least 11 different values. It's a routine thing which is done at at your yearly check-up, but also to check for infections, for example. It is probably similar to a complete blood count (CBC)[1].

I'm not an expert, but from what I understand iron deficiency anemia (IDA) would show in several of these standard blood test values. Not only would Hemoglobin levels be low but also the size of red blood cells be influenced. For a more specific diagnosis of IDA you could ask for ferritin levels, which are not part of the CBC.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_blood_count

kqr2• 9 years ago

Cooking in an iron skillet is an easy way to supplement your diet with iron.

http://goaskalice.columbia.edu/answered-questions/does-cooki...

askvictor2• 9 years ago

Curious, I remember a study a few years ago suggesting a lot of makes in western countries had excessive iron as a result of eating lots of meat and not bleeding.

nradov5• 9 years ago

Excess heme iron from consuming meat is also associated with heart attacks. So too much iron isn't good either.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/04/140423170903.h...

Danihan• 9 years ago

I _really_ doubt it's an iron deficiency considering how much iron is spammed into every particle of fortified grain within the US, and how much grain the average person consumes overall. If anything, I'd guess that it's too much iron.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/stroke-risk-linked-to-iron...

acalderaro• 9 years ago

Possible reasons: Diet (any non-red meat eating diet for nutrient deficiencies, or too much meat due to reliance on fast food), drug/stimulant use (YOLO culture?), More sedentary lifestyle (Desk jobs, social media for 'entertainment'), Lack of resources to take time off from work (too many hours + high rents = no time/money to do have non-home hobbies)

The interesting statistic was the urban regions were less pronounced than the suburbs, which may indicate something either cultural or economic that may drive this change.

Either way, it's unfortunate. We're living in the best possible time in history, and many millennials are being impacted by something which - in some cases - may be completely avoidable.

mazamats• 9 years ago

What does not consuming red-meat have to do with anything? Consumption of red meat is at an all time high and is growing every year.

pcl• 9 years ago

According to another comment here, iron deficiency is a common cause of strokes in younger people. Diets low in red meat often lead to iron deficiency. (Of course, this can be addressed with a supplement, but not everyone who avoids red meat also takes iron supplements.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14683737

axlprose• 9 years ago

Consumption of red meat is at an all time high and is growing every year.

I was curious to see if this was actually the case, but the data doesn't really seem to support this claim. Meat consumption overall appears to have remained relatively stable over the past few years, but it's mostly been an increase in poultry intake that's made up for a simultaneous decline in red meat consumption.

http://www.nationalchickencouncil.org/about-the-industry/sta...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3045642/

http://fortune.com/2015/10/27/red-meat-consumption-decline/

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families...

0xcde4c3db• 9 years ago

drug/stimulant use (YOLO culture?) [...] The interesting statistic was the urban regions were less pronounced than the suburbs, which may indicate something either cultural or economic that may drive this change.

"Energy drinks" (Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar et. al.) blew up in the late '90s/early 2000s or so. As far as I remember, early marketing for these was heavily targeted at "extreme sports" fans and practitioners of their less-extreme variants (e.g. skateboarding). I wonder if that targeting might have something to do with the urban/suburban split.

Animats• 9 years ago

Almost doubled in some areas since 2003. That's huge.

802112• 9 years ago

It's mostly obesity. If we allowed for obesity as a reason to deny health coverage, then health innsurance would be affordable.

And since it costs nothing to lose weight, it seems fair.

Pulcinella• 9 years ago

If we allowed for bad opinions as a reason to deny health coverage, then health insurance would be affordable.

And since it costs nothing to post better, it seems fair.

ams61102• 9 years ago

No need to go full denial. Insurance is priced according to risk. If I've got a record of accidents and traffic violations then my car insurance costs more. If I'm 100 lbs overweight and hypertensive then life insurance costs more. Medical insurance can be priced the same way, creating incentives to maintain a healthy weight and diet.

majewsky2• 9 years ago

it costs nothing to lose weight

Citation needed.

cgag• 9 years ago

Don't buy so much food.

542458• 9 years ago

since it costs nothing to lose weight, it seems fair.

This is only a half truth. Starving yourself is free, but losing weight while still eating a variety of foods (most people can't stomach 24/7 lentils) on extreme financial (including preparation equipment) and time constraints (prep time, time to get ingredients) is nontrivial. Look at the nutritional content of the cheapest and most readily available food you can find (fast food, walmart-brand sausages, etc etc etc). It's typically full of fat and sugars. Higher-quality readily available foods are typically more expensive and harder to come by in poorer areas. Higher-qiality food you prepare yourself is an option, but learning how to do as such is nontrivial and the time investment to prepare these foods can be a major challenge for some.

noir_lord• 9 years ago

It's not that hard with proper planning (I did it, I lost 70lbs).

Takes 20 minutes for oven to eat up and 12 for pizza to cook.

In 32 minutes you can cook a healthy cheap meal with variety.

I ate porridge for breakfast, cottage cheese and salad for lunch and and chicken/veg, fish/veg for evening meal.

lr4444lr• 9 years ago

No one's responsible for anything anymore. What you're saying essentially amounts to poverty preventing people from shedding a disease of affluence.

mrkrab• 9 years ago

I completely disagree with losing weight "costing nothing". A good diet is usually more expensive than a bad diet. Preparation also requires more time, which is money. Education on what you have to eat, how to cook it, etc. is money too. Exercise requires free time, which is money too. Hence why poor people have higher levels of obesity.

antisthenes• 9 years ago

I agree completely, but most people could go 80% of the way just by eating 20% smaller portions of the same food they eat right now.

Does it cost more to cook smaller portions? I think even worst case scenario is it costs the same, e.g. you cook the same amount and throw 20% away (or it goes bad).

What would help is if people stopped treating weight loss as some insurmountable problem.

taeric4• 9 years ago

Even assuming that this was true... the logic doesn't even make sense. If you have fewer people in an insurance pool, than the costs of it are higher. Pretty much by definition.

You can almost get away with this if you purport that the actual costs of the pool would go down. However, all it takes is one person having a surprise expense to demolish any small pool's planning.

Seriously, think on this at a level. Try to go in with just 5 friends to cover your costs for health. Works right up to the first time one of you visits the doctor. Which is to say it doesn't work.

jbmorgado2• 9 years ago

"Even assuming that this was true... the logic doesn't even make sense. If you have fewer people in an insurance pool, than the costs of it are higher. Pretty much by definition."

What? That doesn't make any sense and it's surely not by definition.

If you have a set of people, and you create a subset with the healthiest people of the subset (so, what you are doing by removing the obese), of course that the costs per person will be lower for the subset than for the all set.

marze• 9 years ago

You assume some factor results in obesity, which the causes strokes. There is no evidence for this.

More likely, a common combination of factors causes both obesity and strokes.

galois198• 9 years ago

From what I understand, strokes are caused by the same thing heart attacks are - atherosclerotic plaques, and APs are caused by high blood cholesterol - APs are literally constituted of cholesterol/foam cells. Has the consensus changed?

dataisfun• 9 years ago

More commonly from dissections of the internal or external carotid or vertebral arteries, which for some bizarre reasons happens less as you age.

Herodotus384• 9 years ago

Don't take this the wrong way but your statement is incorrect. I don't have time to type out all the various subsets of strokes but Wikipedia is a good initial source. Dissections are fairly uncommon. Far more common are emboli strokes from afib, small vessel atherosclerosis, for example.

Interestingly, dissections as you mention cause ischemic strokes by (generally speaking) flicking off clots that mess things up downstream that form within a pouch made by the dissection (low blood flow + body trying to patch things up = pro-coagulation). Note in this case there is a tear in the artery wall but the wall remains (ie, no blood exits the artery).

This is different than an aneurysm, when the arterial wall bursts and you have bleeding within the brain. That is termed a hemorrhagic stroke.

Source: hospitalist physician for 7 years who has cared for 100s of strokes at a hospital that specializes in neurology.

sjg007• 9 years ago

There are two major kinds of stroke, ischemic and hemorrhagic.

abalone• 9 years ago

While that may be the most common cause, there are many causes of strokes including, in some cases, birth defects that have nothing to do with lifestyle or genetics (as far as we know). See: AVM.

dcosson• 9 years ago

I was under the impression that those correlations are clear but the causalities are still very much up for debate.

ridgeguy• 9 years ago

Depends on the type of stroke. There are occlusive strokes, which are due to blockage by plaques, and there are hemorrhagic strokes, which are due to vessel failure and bleeding.

Anecdata: My dad died of a hemorrhagic stroke. My mom of an occlusive stroke. No plaques in my dad. A very few in my mom. It's complicated.

nraynaud• 9 years ago

I couldn't find the separation by kind of stroke (arterial/veinous, ischemic/hemorrhagic).

pella• 9 years ago

2 months ago:

"Researchers Find Gut Bacteria Can Trigger Brain Lesions That Lead to Strokes ; Another connection between the gut and the brain."

http://www.sciencealert.com/researchers-find-gut-bacteria-ca...

HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14315355

MicroBerto3• 9 years ago

My longshot theory: Molly.

I've watched brilliant brains literally get ruined by the overuse of that garbage. I would bet anything that it's more dangerous than any of its users want to admit.

sevenfive2• 9 years ago

Do you know what a stroke is?

kaizoku_• 9 years ago

This may only be a case study, but these doctors indicate an association between MDMA use and strokes.

http://ispub.com/IJEICM/8/1/4514

Available data imply a strong association between MDMA abuse and cerebral infraction.

MicroBerto3• 9 years ago

Yes, do you?

Funny how the downvotes and attacks come when you discuss the possibility of drug-induced brain damage in Millennials to a website full of.... drug-defending Millennials!

gridit• 9 years ago

I enjoyed reading this, and was surprised to learn it was written two decades ago in (1998). I wonder what we've learned since?

bogshaker• 9 years ago

Stress of being slaves to a bank for the rest of their lives when wages and jobs in those areas are shrinking, and while they watch the planet being trashed.

More Millennials Are Having Strokes

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