Do you find yourself eating fries and burgers on a regular basis because there's a fast food place near where you live?

A study presented at the International Stroke Conference in San Diego, California, suggested that a person's proximity to places that serve fast food increase the risk of having a stroke by at least 13 percent.

Dr. Lewis Morgenstern, a professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan, studied stroke data in Nueces County, Texas for three years and found 1,246 cases of ischemic stroke in the area. Further research showed that the county had 262 fast food restaurants at the time. By ranking neighborhoods according to the number of fast food restaurants in their area, researchers found that people who live in the top 25 places with the most fast food places were at greater risk of suffering from stroke.

While the study needs more conclusive data related to people's eating and exercise habits, it does present a very interesting link between fast food and stroke and heart diseases. After all, we tend to go for convenient service particularly when we don't have time to cook something more nutritious, despite knowing that fast food has more trans fat than we can imagine.