A local researcher on Sunday announced that he has come up with a formula to predict with an 80 percent accuracy rate the chances of someone having a stroke within 10 years, based on their medical records.
After analyzing the medical records of 500,000 people, National Health Research Institute researcher Wen Chi-pang (溫啟邦) found that there are five main factors that affect the probability of a stroke: if a person is a smoker, a vegetarian, or overweight, and if they exercise to either extreme or drink alcohol.
The answers to these five questions, combined with data on a person’s blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol and uric acid, as well as the presence of anemia and chronic kidney disease, can help predict a stroke with an 80 percent accuracy rate, Wen said.
If the answer to these five questions is yes, the person has a 45 percent chance of suffering a stroke in 10 years, he added.
The likelihood of having a stroke goes up to 93 percent if the individual also suffers from abnormal blood pressure and diabetes, he said.
If other problems such as high cholesterol, anemia, chronic kidney disease and high uric acid levels are factored in, the probability of suffering a stroke rises to 100 percent, he added.
For example, a 60-year-old male vegetarian with normal body weight, who smokes, drinks and does not exercise, would have an 11.1 percent chance of suffering a stroke in the next 10 years, Wen said.
The probability would soar to 84.7 percent if the man is also overweight and exercises vigorously.
However, if he quits smoking, the probability would drop to 54.4 percent, the researcher said.
It would fall further to below 20 percent if the man’s cholesterol and blood pressure return to normal levels, Wen said.
While the ideal cholesterol level for people is between 200mg per deciliter and 300mg per deciliter, studies in Taiwan and abroad show that vegetarians usually have a level of below 130mg per deciliter — which makes them twice as likely as those with an ideal level to suffer a hemorrhagic stroke, he said.
A reading of 160mg per deciliter means a person will have a 50 percent higher chance of suffering a hemorrhagic stroke than those who do not, the researcher said.
Vegetarians tend to have lower cholesterol levels because they lack certain nutrients obtained from meat, he said.
This does not just increase their chances of stroke, but also of developing cancer, he added.
He suggested that non-meat eaters should eat a more balanced diet and exercise more.
Taiwanese can file complaints with the Tourism Administration to report travel agencies if their activities caused termination of a person’s citizenship, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday, after a podcaster highlighted a case in which a person’s citizenship was canceled for receiving a single-use Chinese passport to enter Russia. The council is aware of incidents in which people who signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of Russia were told they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, Chiu told reporters on the sidelines of an event in Taipei. However, the travel agencies actually applied
Japanese footwear brand Onitsuka Tiger today issued a public apology and said it has suspended an employee amid allegations that the staff member discriminated against a Vietnamese customer at its Taipei 101 store. Posting on the social media platform Threads yesterday, a user said that an employee at the store said that “those shoes are very expensive” when her friend, who is a migrant worker from Vietnam, asked for assistance. The employee then ignored her until she asked again, to which she replied: "We don't have a size 37." The post had amassed nearly 26,000 likes and 916 comments as of this
New measures aimed at making Taiwan more attractive to foreign professionals came into effect this month, the National Development Council said yesterday. Among the changes, international students at Taiwanese universities would be able to work in Taiwan without a work permit in the two years after they graduate, explainer materials provided by the council said. In addition, foreign nationals who graduated from one of the world’s top 200 universities within the past five years can also apply for a two-year open work permit. Previously, those graduates would have needed to apply for a work permit using point-based criteria or have a Taiwanese company
The Shilin District Prosecutors’ Office yesterday indicted two Taiwanese and issued a wanted notice for Pete Liu (劉作虎), founder of Shenzhen-based smartphone manufacturer OnePlus Technology Co (萬普拉斯科技), for allegedly contravening the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) by poaching 70 engineers in Taiwan. Liu allegedly traveled to Taiwan at the end of 2014 and met with a Taiwanese man surnamed Lin (林) to discuss establishing a mobile software research and development (R&D) team in Taiwan, prosecutors said. Without approval from the government, Lin, following Liu’s instructions, recruited more than 70 software
RSS