Can a Heart Problem Lead to a Stroke? What You Need to Know
Picture a 55-year-old man who has never really been ill. He gets a little breathless on the stairs, puts it down to age, and carries on. Then one morning his right arm goes limp and his words come out jumbled. The family assumes something is wrong with his brain. And it is. But the trouble started somewhere else entirely: his heart. So, can a heart problem lead to a stroke? Yes, and more often than most people think. Same blood, same risk Your brain doesn’t make its own blood supply. Everything it gets is pushed up by the heart. When that pump misbehaves, the brain pays for it. A stroke is what happens when blood flow to part of the brain is cut off by a clot, or when a weakened vessel bursts and bleeds. How a heart ends up causing one The usual story is a clot. If the heart quivers instead of beating steadily, blood can sit in the upper chambers and thicken. Sooner or later a piece may break off, ride the bloodstream up the neck, and jam in a small artery in the brain....