It’s not clear whether living next to burger joints means you’re more inclined to eat greasy, high-calorie foods or whether they are merely indicators of other unhealthy neighborhood factors, but there’s definitely a link between fast-food restaurants and a person’s risk of stroke, according to a new study. CNNHealth.com reports that researchers – led by Dr. Lewis B. Morgenstern at the University of Michigan – counted 1,247 strokes caused by blood clots in the southeast Texas county that includes Corpus Christi, from January 2000 through June 2003. After mapping the county’s 262 fast-food restaurants and adjusting for socioeconomic status and demographics, they found a dramatic link. “The association suggested that the risk of stroke in a neighborhood increased by 1 percent for every fast-food restaurant,” the authors wrote in a poster presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in San Diego. They found that the residents of neighborhoods in the 75th percentile of fast-food restaurants had a 6 percent increased risk of stroke, compared with residents of the 25th percentile of such eateries, according to the study, which was paid for by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Morgenstern, director of the University of Michigan’s stroke program and professor of neurology and epidemiology, warned that the finding does not prove that proximity to fast-food restaurants caused the increase in strokes of people living nearby. “What we don’t know is whether fast food actually increased the risk because of its contents or whether fast-food restaurants are a marker of unhealthy neighborhoods,” he said.

TAGS: fast-food restaurants, stroke

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