6 replies to this topic

[OldSeattle]

My elderly mother, 81 years old has had numerous TIA's or mini strokes, luckily they haven't caused any permanent damage. She's in relatively good health but has mobility issues and type II diabetes and is on lisinopril, metformin, simvastatin, baby aspirin and levothyroxin for her hypothyroidism. I've been taking care of her the last few years and she'll have these TIA's out of the blue, they usually last a few minutes or up to 20 minutes-where she'll garble her words, have numbness in one hand. They go away and she's back to normal, sometimes she'll have a minor headache. When one is occurring I give her 4 or 5 chewable baby aspirin which usually shortens the duration. Anyhow, these episodes are troubling.

 

She's been seen by her neurologist and had several MRI's of her brain and the doctors say there isn't much they can do to prevent these. She was on plavix after one of her first TIA's but it didn't help and I think caused more problems. The neurologist just recommends the one baby aspirin a day. 

 

Does anyone have any ideas about supplements that might be helpful. I have her taking CoQ10, Alpha Lipoic Acid and a B-complex vitamin. I was thinking of Tocotrienols or Astaxanthin or Krill oil? 

 

If anyone has suggestions I'm all ears. 

 

Thanks

[zorba990]

Perhaps Pollicosanol?
https://pubmed.ncbi....h.gov/17004902/
" Policosanol persistently lowered serum total cholesterol, with such reduction correlating with the neurological improvement (R = 0.995253301). Triglycerides were unchanged. Treatment was well tolerated. Policosanol administered to patients suffering ischemic stroke treated with aspirin and vitamins showed good results on neurological outcomes and recurrent events. This study, however, has limitations, since it was open and uncontrolled, and patients also consumed aspirin and vitamins. New randomized, controlled studies are needed to assess the usefulness of policosanol in stroke management."

[rarefried]

Some evidence for benefit of resveratrol.  

 

EG, https://www.frontier...022.948889/full

[zorba990]

Magnesium may help:

The Effect of Magnesium Intake on Stroke Incidence: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis With Trial Sequential Analysis
https://www.frontier...2019.00852/full
"Background: The effect of magnesium on stroke has been consistently discussed less, and the results of previous studies have been contradictory. We reviewed the latest literature and quantified robust evidence of the association between magnesium intake and stroke risk.
Methods: PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library, the Web of Science and ClinicalTrials.gov were searched through inception to January 15, 2019 for prospective cohort studies on magnesium intake and the incidence of stroke.
Results: Fifteen studies with low bias involving 18 cohorts were entered into this study. The summary relative risk (RR) was significantly reduced by 11% for total stroke (RR: 0.89 [95% CI, 0.83–0.94]; P < 0.001) and by 12% for ischemic stroke (RR: 0.88 [95% CI, 0.81–0.95]; P = 0.001), comparing the highest magnesium intake category to the lowest. After adjusting for calcium intake, the inverse association still existed for total stroke (RR: 0.89 ([95% CI, 0.80–0.99]; P = 0.040). There was an inverse but non-significant association for hemorrhagic stroke, subarachnoid hemorrhage and intracerebral hemorrhage. The quantitative associations for total and ischemic stroke were robust. Importantly, high-risk females who had a body mass index (BMI) ≥25 kg/m2 and who were subjected to a ≥12 y follow-up exhibited a greater decrease in RRs as a result of magnesium intake. For each 100 mg/day increase in magnesium, the risk for total stroke was reduced by 2% and the risk for ischemic stroke was reduced by 2%.
Conclusions: Increasing magnesium intake may be a crucial component of stroke prevention that acts in a dose-dependent manner. However, the conclusion is limited by the observational nature of the studies examined, and further randomized controlled trials are still needed."

[OldSeattle]

Thanks Zorba and Rarefried, all good suggestions. The TIA's are scary in the sense that they're signs of a possible upcoming stroke and my mother's had dozens of them. She'll go months without having one and then in this last week she's had 2. 

[zorba990]

Thanks Zorba and Rarefried, all good suggestions. The TIA's are scary in the sense that they're signs of a possible upcoming stroke and my mother's had dozens of them. She'll go months without having one and then in this last week she's had 2.

How are her teeth / gums? Seems many elderly are not able to take good care of that area and have issues with unfriendly organisms there.
So that might be an area to look for hidden infection as a root cause.

[OldSeattle]

An update on my mom's TIA's/mini strokes and what has ended them.

 

Having no luck with supplements like Coq10 and various others and the lack of any help from her doctors at Kaiser I decides to use chat gbt about a year ago and asked it a question along the lines of "what's the best way to avoid a stroke in the elderly."  It's answer was that high blood pressure was the main cause of stroke and TIA's and getting it under control was paramount. My mom was on the maximum dose of lisiniprol and yet her blood pressure was still high. I thought there wasn't much else to do because none of her doctors offered to put her on more blood pressure meds.

 

So, I called up Kasier got an appointment in two weeks or so-which is fast for them and my mother and I met with a PA who spent about 5 minutes with us and agreed that her blood pressure needed to come down and put her on Amlodipine  in addition to her Lisinopril. And it worked like a charm. Her blood pressure is now around 135/80 and she hasn't had one TIA since. 

 

The supplements I gave her surely didn't hurt-Alpha lipoic acid, krill oil, astaxanthin, Coq10 and probably helped marginally,  I still give them to her. But it was the BP meds that really did the trick, the only side effect from the Amlodipine is a bit of edema in her feet. But no more TIA's in over a year, a huge relief.

 

The funny part about the visit to Kaiser was that my mom while in the clinic wanted a skin tag removed, so the PA got her freezing device and froze it off. It took all of about 10 seconds. A week later we get the bill and Kaiser charges 400 DOLLARS for the skin tag operation. With her insurance and medicare we only had to pay 60 bucks or so but still what a scam and a serious indictment on our American medical system. 

 

Zorba990 was also correct regarding my mother's dental health which had been seriously neglected. For some reason she gave up going to the dentist about 15 years ago-I think she figured she wasn't going to live that long so why bother. Anyhow,  I've been taking her to a good dentist whose been removing bad teeth and putting in fillings where needed. Her dental health was surely not helping matters.