If you have ever been told that crossing your legs is bad for your health due to circulation problems, don’t worry because that is a myth. When you look down at your arms, legs, or feet, you may notice blue or purple lines running beneath your skin, these are called veins.
Arteries carry blood form your heart to areas in the body, while your veins are responsible for delivering blood back to your heart. As blood is needed to send oxygen to your organs, tissues, and cells in the body, the cardiovascular system is the hub. Without your beating heart, you wouldn’t be able to carry out daily activities such as eating, breathing, and sleeping.
The reasons why our veins appear purple or blue is because oxygen is removed from your blood, and travels back in your heart. When your veins do not move blood back into your heart properly from your legs, and the one-way valves located along the blood vessels begin to function improperly, causing pressure and congestion in your veins, thus varicose veins emerge.
Treatment of varicose veins has come a long way since the primary varicose vein treatment was vein stripping. Doctors used to pull the varicose veins out of the skin through small incisions. Today, there are a variety of treatment to choose from, and while many patients ultimately choose a surgical procedure to get rid of these troublesome blood vessels, others are able to reduce symptoms of varicose veins without surgery. These treatments include:
Sclerotherapy: To treat varicose veins physician’s use sclerotherapy. During this procedure, the physician uses a thin needle to inject what is called a sclerosing agent into each vein. The substance inside the injection is a salt water solution that irritates the wall of the varicose vein, causing the blood vessels to close and disappear.
Ambulatory Phlebectomy: During this outpatient procedure, the doctor will make several tiny cuts or incisions in the leg to remove the varicose veins.
Compression Stockings: Compression stockings are often prescribed for patients with varicose veins, because they squeeze the blood and circulate it up your legs to avoid blood clots from forming.
To learn more about varicose veins and how to treat them, call The Vein Institute & MediSpa in Kingwood, TX today at (281) 312-0208 to request an appointment, or request an appointment online.
