Working before and after stroke is good for brain health

Keep working during old age for good health as a study has recently suggested that stroke patients who are employed prior to and after suffering strokes are more likely to have healthier minds than unemployed adults.

The findings indicated that returning to work after stroke was associated with lower cognitive decline risk.

They also found that people who were unemployed before stroke were more than three times (320 percent) more likely than those who were employed to develop cognitive decline within two years from the initial stroke.

Senior author Einor Ben Assayag from Tel-Aviv Sorasky Medical Center, Tel-Aviv, Israel said, "Studies have shown stroke greatly increases dementia risk, and occupational status might influence how stroke survivors fare years after having a stroke".

They looked at how occupational status, brain health and cognitive decline might be interrelated after stroke.

The team studied 252 working-age adult stroke survivors from the TABASCO study.

They analysed brain health early on after stroke, as well as cognitive changes, at one year and two years after the stroke.

"They wanted to study the inflammation with occupational status and cognitive changes after stroke," she said.

The results suggested that those who were unemployed before stroke were more likely to have a worse neurological deficit, higher depression scores and more elevated inflammation.

"The message here is to keep on working", Ben Assayag stated.

In fact, being unemployed was by itself a risk factor for cognitive decline and death.

The research is scheduled to be presented at meeting AHA International Stroke Conference 2018 in Los Angeles, California.