ON Wednesday morning, Hamilton Medical Group and Western District Health Service men’s health/urology nurse practitioner, Stuart Willder, delivered a presentation about strokes to the Hamilton Men’s Shed.

The presentation started by emphasising how men tend to focus on their health this week, rather than the whole year.

Mr Willder said stroke awareness is very important due to rural stroke rates being significantly higher than metropolitan areas.

“Men’s Health Week is very important but should be focused more often than one week per year and if people think something is wrong then they should see myself or another GP,” he said.

He then spoke about how to notice if somebody is suffering from a stroke and what the symptoms look like, as well as mentioning that every 19 minutes somebody in Australia suffers one.

A stroke can potentially mean that those affected will end up in a wheelchair or in some sort of care and that those living in bush areas are more likely to suffer from a stroke than those that live in the city.

Strokes are one of the biggest killers amongst both men and women and people should be aware of them especially above the age of 50.

He spoke about what contributes to men suffering from strokes, and the factors that people can and can’t control.

The controllable factors include cholesterol, blood pressures, stress, keeping fit, reduced weight, and the uncontrollable factors like genetics and blood vessel deformity.

Mr Willder said that when a stroke happens it attacks about 1.9 million brain cells per minute – so if you damage your blood supply, every minute counts.

“If you wait 10 minutes before you ring the ambulance then you will lose 10 times the amount of brain cells then if you had of rung an ambulance straight away,” he said.