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REAL LIFE NEWS: SEE, I TOLD YOU THAT SEX, COFFEE, AND BLOWING YOUR NOSE WERE BAD FOR YOU!

by Hazed

Researchers in the Netherlands who have been looking at possible causes of a particular type of stroke, where blood vessels in the brain burst, have identified three activities they say are risk factors: sex, coffee, and blowing your nose!

These all increase blood pressure, and that could result in blood vessels bursting.

Ok, I'd better stop blowing my nose then!

The researchers from the University Medical Center in Utrecht studied 250 patients for three years, to identify what triggers ruptures in the blood vessels in the brain, and they came up with a list showing the percentages of different causes of the ruptures. It's worth looking at the whole table because it's a rather strange list:

• Coffee 10.6%
• Vigorous exercise 7.9%
• Nose blowing 5.4%
• Sex 4.3%
• Straining to defecate 3.6%
• Drinking cola 3.5%
• Being startled 2.7%
• Being angry 1.3%

It would seem to be impossible to avoid all of these - while you could lay off the coffee and cola, refrain from having sex and stop blowing your nose, the only way to avoid being startled would be to never leave the house! Vigorous exercise, no problem, I don't need an excuse to stop that. But while I am generally a calm and placid person, I do get angry sometimes, particularly when watching politicians on the TV mouthing their hypocritical platitudes. As for straining... let's not go there.

Read more about the causes of strokes and brain aneurysms here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13294022.

Footnote: sex may cause strokes, but marriages reduce the risk, which must prove that people have less sex after marriage than before: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8530221.stm.

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