If you thought getting mugged was more likely than a stroke - wrong again!

A new survey suggests that the risk of having a stroke is greatly underestimated by most people in the UK.

Strokes are caused by bleeds or clots in the brain and research has shown that up to 40% of strokes could be prevented by lifestyle changes.

The survey by the Stroke Association polled almost 2,000 adults and found one out of every five thought they were more likely to be mugged.

It seems only 6% feared a stroke.

Though it is a fact that muggings happen every 13 minutes on average, every year, some 130,000 people in the UK have a stroke, which is an average of one every four minutes.

Joe Korner a spokesman for the association, says that after heart disease and cancer, strokes are the next big killer in the UK, and the main cause of severe disability, with 250,000 people affected at any one time.

According to the association, every year, 60,000 people in the UK die from a stroke, and are 13% of all deaths among women and 8% among men.

Korner says that much more must be done to educate the general public about how to reduce their risk of stroke, especially by having their blood pressure checked regularly.

Stroke patients occupy one in four long-term hospital beds and one in five acute ones, costing the NHS more than £2.3bn every year, and only one out of every three stroke patients make a full recovery.

High blood pressure means you are seven times more likely to have a stroke - but only two out of every five people are even aware high blood pressure is a major risk factor, and that it means a seven times greater likelihood of a stroke occurring.

It seems that one out of every two people aged above 65 has high blood pressure, yet only 18% of those asked thought they were at risk.

The majority of people appear to be unaware that making even small changes to their lifestyle can have a dramatic impact on their risk of having a stroke.

A stroke is an interruption of the blood supply to the brain that causes brain cells to die.