of the most critical, controllable risk factors is high blood pressure (hypertension). When your blood pressure is consistently high, it puts enormous stress on the walls of your arteries, including those in your brain. This constant pressure inflames and damages the artery walls, accelerating the buildup of the dangerous plaque we talked about (atherosclerosis), which sets the stage for an ischemic stroke. For hemorrhagic strokes, that relentless pressure can weaken a blood vessel over time until it finally ruptures.
The statistics here are truly sobering. It’s estimated that a staggering
