The Charity, Blood Pressure UK has warned that many young people are putting themselves at risk of strokes.
This little tweet has been playing on my mind for a day now.
So at the Youth club I just simply observed an “average” young person.
For those who don’t know, one of the major contributors of strokes is a poor diet coupled with an unhealthy lifestyle.A stroke is and isn’t a heart attack, these three words: stroke and Heart Attack get used interchangeably.A Stroke is when the blood supply stops going to the brain and a heart attack is when the blood supply stops going to the heart (The heart has its own blood supply)
So a unhealthy lifestyle and a bad diet over time lead to high blood pressure which is the culprit that leads to an increased risk of a heart attack or stroke.

The good news is that the total number of strokes in the UK has dropped. The bad news isthere has been an increase in the number of strokes for those aged between 25 to 64.

That means younger people more than ever are suffering from the life-threatening condition. Blood Pressure UK as well as the British Heart Foundation Charities are always encouraging everyone to check their blood pressure as part of Know Your Numbers! Week.
The Know Your Numbers! campaign is the UK’s biggest free blood pressure testing event held at ‘Pressure Stations’ around the country from 18-24 September 2017.  Though I have a sneaky feeling that many of those that do get their blood pressure taken will not be of the age that matters.

What age is it that matters?

…well think about it… all the professionals say that an unhealthy lifestyle and poor diet lead to strokes and heart attacks but the starting age is or must be around 8 years of age (that is the youngest age for young people to enter our Youth Club so this will be an arbitrary age to begin with.) It is this age when we start to mass feed our children “junk” food high sugar, high salt foods, crisps biscuits etc.… so one can argue that the diet bit can be agreed upon, just look at Children’s advertising and you soon see the picture. But what about stress? Does an8-year-old suffer stress?

Observations  of young people’s lifestyles show us that more and more are becoming addicted, obsessed, engrossed with computer games, console games.

In the good old days when most young people craved a ball to kick about, needless to say those sporting events, games, physical activities  in themselves  were stressful enough but the exercise allowed you to deal with that stress appropriately through physical exertion followed by the need to recover from that exertions,  but a computer console game, these games can raise the heart rate and stress levels. I would say more than playing a real game of football but there is no real means to recover, to calm down after playing. Having spoken to countless parents and professionals it appears that the “calming” effect is usually followed by inappropriate mood swings, poor anger management and poor emotional regulation so there we have it… the two major culprits in the lives of young people that can lead to possible strokes and as adults we are all guilty of this…