A. Misconceptions 1. Stroke is a disease that only the elderly can suffer from. This statement is incorrect. Although the proportion of elderly people among stroke patients is high, young people can also get stroke, especially with the increase of unhealthy habits such as smoking, alcoholism, irregular life and unsatisfactory control of high blood pressure, high blood lipid and high blood sugar, the incidence of stroke among young people is increasing year by year. 2. People with normal or low blood pressure should not have strokes. There are many non-blood pressure factors such as hyperlipidemia, diabetes, heart disease, and smoking that can cause atherosclerosis of the cerebral blood vessels, narrowing or occluding the lumen and leading to stroke. Many elderly people who do not have hypertension suddenly wake up in the morning with stroke symptoms, which is related to low blood pressure during sleep at night, slow blood flow, easy deposition of platelets, cholesterol and fibrin in the blood, and blockage of cerebral vessels. Therefore, stroke can occur both in patients with hypertension accompanied by atherosclerosis and in patients with only atherosclerosis but not high blood pressure. 3. Stroke rarely recurs after cure. Stroke is characterized by a high recurrence rate. According to the survey, about 1/3 of stroke patients may have another attack within 1 to 5 years, and with each recurrence, the damage to brain cells and the function of the nervous system is aggravated, and the mortality and disability rate of stroke increases significantly. This is because the so-called stroke cure is only the disappearance of clinical symptoms, its pathological basis – atherosclerosis, hypertension and blood rheological changes, are not cured, so should be taken seriously. 4. Small strokes are irrelevant. Small stroke, also known as stroke aura, is called transient ischemic attack in modern medicine. It is often seen as episodic weakness or numbness of one limb, dizziness, unfavorable speech, etc. The symptoms often disappear within a few minutes to an hour, and the head CT can be examined normally, so it is often not easy to attract people’s attention. In fact, this is a precursor of stroke, if not actively treated, about 1/3 of patients develop into stroke, so we must pay great attention to it and not take it lightly. The actual fact is that you can take aspirin to prevent strokes. Many people know that enteric aspirin can prevent stroke, many people take 1 tablet (25mg) of enteric aspirin every night before bed, in fact, this amount is not enough, and can not achieve the purpose of prevention. The current expert consensus on the prevention of stroke enteric aspirin dosage is 75 to 100 mg per night. 2. Only take drugs for stroke and leave other diseases unattended. Many diseases such as hypertension, coronary heart disease, hyperlipidemia, diabetes are risk factors for stroke, and the control of these diseases plays a very critical role in the prevention and treatment of stroke, and if the treatment is neglected, it is easy to cause a recurrence of stroke or aggravate the stroke disease. 3. just take medication and ignore regular checkups. Many stroke patients with hypertension, hyperlipidemia, diabetes, etc., although treated with drugs, but still need to go to the hospital regularly to check, under the guidance of doctors to control blood pressure, lipids, blood sugar in the ideal state. Some stroke patients, such as those with atrial fibrillation, need to use anticoagulants for life, and these patients must be monitored for coagulation indexes during medication, because an overdose of anticoagulants can cause bleeding, and an underdose can cause thrombosis, so the medication dose needs to be adjusted according to the condition. 4. The more varieties of medication, the better. Some patients who are eager to seek medical treatment will often take a variety of different drugs, especially excessive belief in the newspapers and magazines to promote special drugs, they think this will play a better effect, but not, some drugs, although different trade names, but in the chemical composition of the same class of drugs, can not be used together, otherwise there will be some serious adverse reactions and aggravate the disease. In addition, the function of the organs of the elderly is reduced, the metabolic ability of the liver and kidneys is weakened, and the drug stays in the body for a long time, which makes it easier for drug poisoning to occur. 5. Regular infusion of blood dilution can prevent stroke. In the northern part of China, the most prominent phenomenon in autumn and winter is the elderly queue to the hospital for infusion, some even two bottles at a time, thinking that this can reduce the blood viscosity, reduce the risk of stroke, heart attack. In fact, this concept is very harmful. First, the blood viscosity test itself lacks scientific validity and is now abandoned in many large hospitals, and there is no basis for using blood viscosity as a stroke test. LDL-C (low-density lipoprotein cholesterol) is slowly deposited in the inner wall of the arteries to form atherosclerotic plaques, narrowing and blocking the blood vessels. These plaques are “untimely bombs” that can rupture at any time, leading to acute brain and heart attacks. To defuse the bombs, we need to control the process of atherosclerosis, which is a long-term process inseparable from stroke prevention and atherosclerosis control.