There’s just something about a news article entitled ” When Sex Leads To A Stroke ” that makes my eyebrows rise with suspicion.
Headlines, of course, are written to grab the attention of the reader, so they tend to lean towards exaggeration. But the title of this article isn’t exaggerating. It’s just plain misleading.
The story is actually about a woman who suffered a stroke due a hole in her heart and a blood clot caused by birth control pills. But instead of writing “Birth Control May Lead to Blood Clot and Stroke,” the writer decided to highlight the fact that the woman had sex directly before the stroke occurred. It’s not until the seventh paragraph that the reader is told the real cause:
The patient was taking birth control pills which are known to cause blood clots. Dr. Biller and his team investigated the patient’s medical history and found a previously undetected hole in her heart. They theorize that the hole in her heart coupled with a blood clot might have led to the stroke.
In the end, sex didn’t have much to do with the woman’s stroke at all. It could have just as easily occurred while jogging. But you couldn’t guess that from the headline. Unfortunately, this isn’t the only report of this story to take such an angle in their headline.
