Dr. Gary Steinberg

It may be in part due to decreased smoking, but it also is in part due to other modifiable factors.

So hypertension is much better treated now than it used to be.

People take better care of themselves in terms of other lifestyle factors.

So people exercise more.

There's a lower incidence in some subgroups of obesity.

Those are the risk factors also for developing strokes as well as heart attack.

Yeah, it's a good point.

In general, the things that are good for the heart are good for the brain.

There are differences between the heart and the brain, but they both depend very much on blood flow.

The brain's unique, though, because the brain represents only 2% of the body weight.

yet it draws 15% of the total blood flow.

And remarkably, it consumes 20% of the body's oxygen.

So the brain, I still think the brain is the most important organ, not the heart, not the kidneys, but I'm biased, of course.

I mean, every patient is different.

So I'm always learning and that's why I still enjoy it.

That it's a challenge and you have to think quickly.

It's not simply mechanical.

But for instance, a couple of weeks ago, I had a patient who had a vascular malformation, which was located, we thought, right in her speech area.

So in order to operate safely, first we did what's called a functional MR scan before surgery.

And that gives us some idea of where the speech area is.