My best friend's mum went through a phase of these even though she was in her late forties/early fifties. My gran did too actually but she was in her eightees. Another friends Dad had just the one just before he retired.

Generally (this is info from my mum, who has a lot of patients who have them) TIAs are a bit like warning shots. You can have one and be a bit bewildered for a short while but then go back to normal, however they are bought on by the same sorts of things that bring on a stroke. As a result patients who have them are often urged to take the usual medical advice for reducing stroke risk, lowering blood pressure by cutting salt intake,stopping smoking, not drinking heavily, if they are imobile taking measures to maintain good circulation to prevent clots, care if having invasive procedues as a medical patient and maybe the administration of blood thinning agents so on and so forth.

Generally although it can cause 'funny spells' and disorientation, memory loss, short term movement problems etc, and over time if they happen repeatedly you may end up with permanent damage, TIAs are not as desperately debilitating as a full stroke is.

Blood flow etc is really interesting. I'm a migrainer and a lot of migraine symptoms are a bit stroke/TIA like. It's not entirely sure what causes them though, it is partly genetic certainly, but there's something that seems to alter our brain chemistry and causes irregularities in the blood flow leading to the usual pain, vomiting, disorientation, body shut down, partial paralysis or lack of coordination, weird visuals and other sensory strangeness that we get when we have a migraine. We also go through periods of not processing information like other people do which is why things like smells can trigger them in some people.

I often wonder if more understanding of migraine would help stroke and TIA research. I've got them before by going to the hairdresser and those horrible sinks you have to lie back over. It can reduce the blood flow to your brain because of the pressure on the major vessels of the neck. There has been at least one case I can remember of someone having a stroke from the same thing.