This’ll get your blood pumping.
Plastic — the same stuff choking the oceans and your takeout containers — may be increasing your chance of having a stroke.
In a shocking twist worthy of sci-fi, scientists have found that the arteries of stroke patients are littered with microplastics.
Researchers studying stroke victims discovered that those who suffered strokes had 51 times more plastic clogging up their arteries than people with clean bills of health.
“There are some microplastics in normal, healthy arteries,” lead author Dr. Ross Clark, a University of New Mexico medical researcher, told Business Insider.
“But the amount that’s there when they become diseased — and become diseased with symptoms — is really, really different.”
Clark and his team found microplastics and their mini-siblings — nanoplastics — in the fatty plaque that can build up in arteries, creating a fast track to a stroke or heart attack.
“It’s very shocking to see 51 times higher,” said Jaime Ross, a neuroscientist at the University of Rhode Island who has researched microplastics but was not involved in this study.
What precisely these microplastics are doing to our bodies is still a scientific mystery.
“We just don’t know,” Clark said. “Almost all of what we know about microplastics in the human body, no matter where you look, can be summed up as: It’s there, and we need to study further as to what it’s doing, if anything.”
But it’s safe to assume that, whatever it is, it’s not good.
After all, another alarming finding was that critical genes that usually fight off inflammation were shut off in plastic-packed arteries — along with other disturbing genetic mutations.
“Could it be that microplastics are somehow altering their gene expression?” Clark said, adding that there’s “lots more research needed to fully establish that, but at least it gives us a hint as to where to look.”
Ross agreed that, while it’s too early to determine plastic exposure causes strokes, one thing’s for sure — “these plastics are doing something with these plaques.”
Scientists have found microplastics in human lungs, livers, kidneys, hearts, blood, testicles and even breast milk — and some researchers uncovered an entire spoonful of them in human brains.
Studies suggest they could damage cells and disrupt organs, potentially increasing the risk of heart disease, cancer, infertility and other chronic conditions.
To reduce the microplastics in your body, experts recommend not drinking out of plastic water bottles, avoiding plastic tea bags, boiling and filtering tap water, ditching plastic cutting boards and keeping plastic containers out of the microwave.
