their stroke risk in half within a year of stopping smoking so incredibly motivational - you know it's hard to stop smoking but a huge payoff if you stop and the risk from stroke smoking goes almost away after five years if your cholesterol is high it will your stroke risk can be cut down by about 20 percent by using these statin medications okay like torva statin or lipitor is a popular one or simvastatin pravastatin these are medicines that reduce cholesterol and probably have other beneficial effects that we'll talk about